Economy & Responsibility
The practically oriented projects of the foundation in the Economy & Responsibility segment broach the issue of responsible action in a business context and raise questions for the prerequisites of this within a company. In doing so, the possibilities and restrictions of ethical (social and ecological) economic activities are considered without losing sight of the actual (!) conditions of global economic interrelations. On this basis, operational frameworks and codes of conduct for managers and decision-makers of the future can be developed.
Discourse on corporate responsibility
It is crucial that corporate social responsibility cannot be uniformly defined for all sectors, company sizes and organizational structures. Where corporate responsibility begins, where it ends and which areas it should cover is also always a component of public and political debate. National and international framework conditions, such as the Global Reporting Initiative, the Global Compact, the OECD Guidelines etc., play a key role here. They define the cross-cultural minimum standards on which corporate responsibility must be measured.
Transparency and verifiability
This transparent verifiability is of great significance against the backdrop of the recognizable credibility deficit of social and ecological corporate activities. Since not only NGOs and journalists, but also critical consumers, increasingly see marketing concepts behind CSR activities of companies or interpret them as greenwashing. The decisive factor for the credibility of CSR concepts is therefore whether this is just a communication tool or whether the ethical and social issues of the added value of companies are considered and integrated into the business processes and thus into the company strategy.
An ethical risk assessment with an industry focus as a starting point for solution-oriented dialogues between companies, politics and NGOs is therefore at the centre of the foundation's work in this field.