CSR Data Tied to Better Scores

By Bahar Gidwani

The subject of this post could be summarized as (for those who know Latin) scientia potentas est. This is a quote from Francis Bacon that means, “in knowledge is power.” We recently contributed knowledge from our sustainability information system, that helps substantiate some ground-breaking research. Both studies showed a connection between strong social performance and a commitment to sharing data and knowledge. We hope these research studies will be powerful tools for influencing corporate behavior.

On March 6, Cora Lee Mooney, in conjunction with the BrownFlynn team, published a report called “GRI Application Levels: Why Strive for an A?” Brown Flynn is a both a well-known sustainability consulting firm and one of only a few GRI-certified training partners. They wanted to understand if companies benefit from receiving the A level for their Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) report. Do they get credit for the hard work this accomplishment requires, from outside stakeholders? With a lot of hard work, they confirmed that there was a positive relationship between GRI application level and CSRHub’s sustainability rating score.

The folks at Brown Flynn were careful not to claim that the simple act of reporting information caused companies to be more positively viewed. It is possible (and perhaps even likely?) that companies that adopt GRI reporting are good corporate citizens, even before they start the reporting process. For instance, the following graph shows that the distribution of ratings on the CSRHub system for companies who commit to the UN Global Compact, is much better than those who do not.

To read more about CSR data and CSR scores, visit the CSRHub blog >>