Evaluating the UN Global Compact Communication on Progress as a CSR Benchmarking Tool

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) extends beyond mere profit-seeking to encompass the ethical behavior of a company toward society, mitigating negative and generating positive impacts on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, and all stakeholders. The UN Global Compact (UNGC) is the world’s largest voluntary CSR initiative, and its Communication on Progress (CoP) requirement is a key reporting mechanism that allows participating companies to transparently showcase their progress and efforts regarding CSR. As more and more companies are reporting CSR practices, it is crucial to establish a global, standardized, trusted, accessible, and useful database that can be used by different stakeholders, including the companies themselves in the benchmarking process. This paper examines whether the UNGC CoP can be used as a sustainability benchmarking tool, based on well-established criteria, and compares it with other existing reporting frameworks. Results indicate that the UNGC CoP can be considered a benchmarking tool, being applicable to nearly all phases of the benchmarking process. The study also shows that the CoP stands out regarding other frameworks due to ample coverage of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), number of reporting companies, accessibility to all stakeholders, and consolidation of the information into one platform.