Foretica CSR Conference, Madrid

Alice with German Granda, Madrid.

Madrid, Sept. 20, 2011 [updated Oct. 3, 2011] - I am in Madrid with Alice attending the launching by Foretica of the Spanish component of Enterprise 2020, the corporate part of the planning exercise of the European Union that was launched last October. We attended a dinner yesterday for speakers hosted on Sept. 19 by German Granda of Foretica. See photo at left of German and Alice.

The European effort is led by CSR Europe, of which Stefan Crets is Executive Director. He said at the conference opening today that  Europe-wide they have recruited 3,000 companies in 27 member countries as partners in the project. Crets used to be at Toyota. In his introductory remarks he asked:  “What is the added value of CSR? How can it add value for society and the company? The business case can be made easily in some areas, but in others it is simply a belief. In the 'third phase' of CSR we must emphasize innovation. How does the core business model generate innovation toward sustainability? What new ideas, businesses can be created that address sustainability issues? Urban mobility, for example, will require government cooperation to move toward plug-in hybrids, smart cars, electric cars. We need to look to practical projects.” 

LtoR: John Tepper Marlin, Gefei Yin, German Granda, Madrid, Sept. 20. 

Conference participants at Foretica Conference, Madrid, September 20, 2011.

The Spanish launch is led by Foretica, of which Juan Pedro Galiano is President and German Granda is Director General. Foretica is recruiting Spanish companies to join in the European corporate effort. Companies are asked to come up with ideas for solving environmental and social problems. The elephant in the room was Spain’s economic crisis, which dampened the enthusiasm of Spanish companies to send their top executives to the conference. However, the number and importance of the companies at the conference was impressive. While many companies may be cautious about committing themselves heavily to the program, they are clearly eager to avoid the other danger, which is being absent from the dialog. In fact, the quality of the corporate staff that showed up was extremely high – the corporate speakers were well informed and masters of their subject matter. [My report on comments by Spanish speakers is based on the simultaneous translation provided by the conference.]

Pedro Ortun, Director of Enterprises and Industry of the EU, spoke of his office, which was opened in June 2010 in Brussels. He assists in recruiting companies to create partnerships with government entities in Spain.. Now 700 companies are involved Europe-wide with the BSCI initiative, which has led the way [its labor standard is based on the SA 8000 standard]. Since 10,000 companies have more than 1,000 employees,  many large companies are still not involved. Active corporate CSR groups exist in 7-8 member states - what about the remaining 27 member states? Most companies have a small CSR component in their advertising and put out a CSR report. But this is not enough. Companies need to involve their stakeholders and checking on their processes. Very few, maybe 10 companies, where the company is totally responsible. 

Will Day spoke eloquently on environmental issues (deserves a post of its own) and Alice Tepper Marlin spoke on labor issues, especially SA 8000.