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Blog | Tuesday February 14, 2017

Turning Global Challenges into Collaborative Solutions: BSR's Collaborative Initiatives

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Since being founded 25 years ago, BSR has had a consistent focus on uniting the business community and its stakeholders in collaborative initiatives that co-create solutions to systemic business and sustainability challenges. Today, we’re engaging more than 200 companies in 20-plus initiatives, covering a wide range of sectors and issues—from clean fuel for commercial road freight to ethical practices in luxury-industry value chains. And BSR had a hand in developing several well-known initiatives that today operate as independent organizations.

With the continuous efforts of our members and stakeholders, this collaborative work generates concrete positive outcomes for business, societies, and the environment through sharing best practices, changing business norms, and driving collective, sustainable solutions. For example:

• The Healthcare Working Group has developed the Guiding Principles on Access to Healthcare, through which CEOs of 13 major pharmaceutical companies have framed their efforts to reduce the global burden of disease by helping ensure that medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, and other medical technology and assistance are effectively developed and deployed.
• Through the Future of Internet Power, more than 20 technology companies have committed to sourcing 100 percent renewable energy for their data centers.
• Companies in the Responsible Luxury Initiative have developed and adopted a set of high-level principles for the sourcing of leather, fur, and exotic skins.
• The Clean Cargo Working Group continues to provide a leading industry platform for promoting responsible shipping, as well as reliable year-on-year emissions performance data from 23 of the world’s leading ocean carriers that represent approximately 85 percent of global ocean container capacity.
• The Maritime Anti-Corruption Network, now with more than 80 corporate members, is working with governments, local authorities, and civil society stakeholders around the world to improve the transparency, efficiency, and integrity of business operations at global trading hubs. 

Commitment to Transformative Change

The growth and impact of these initiatives demonstrate a clear desire among companies and stakeholders for coordinated action—but we’re convinced that we can go even further to drive truly transformative change. Last year, the United Nations reinforced this message with the inclusion of the 17th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), which recognizes that the other 16 goals will only be achieved through “partnership that brings together governments, civil society, the private sector, the United Nations system, and other actors and mobilizes all available resources.”  

This year, we are strengthening BSR’s capacity to convene business and stakeholders to develop and scale collaborative initiatives that overcome the challenges the SDGs present. We will seek to radically evolve our capacity to drive transformative change through collaborative initiatives, using the following principles for success:

• Collaboration requires meticulous management: We’ll strengthen our operational capabilities, such as communication, technology, governance, and administration platforms.
• Impact requires scale: We’ll strengthen and scale our existing Collaborative Initiatives through several approaches, including by partnering more effectively with stakeholders, funders, and governments.
• Innovation requires multistakeholder involvement: We’ll employ inclusive and interactive innovation processes to incubate and develop new collaborative initiatives.

This work will build on our platform of key initiatives that tackle systemic challenges, and we will actively engage with our members to ensure that the new collaborations address their business needs, as well as drive positive societal and environmental change. This includes reaching out to our network to understand which issues our members and partners most want solved, as well as hosting a series of multi-day, multistakeholder workshops focused on systemic challenges and new ideas for collaboration.

Look out for further opportunities to engage as we build out this key element of BSR’s business leadership strategy for a just and sustainable world.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll highlight outcomes and impacts from BSR collaborations in a social media campaign—follow @BSRnews—and on the BSR blog.  

Blog | Friday December 7, 2018

The Maritime Anti-Corruption Network: More Members, More Action, More Impact

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The Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN)—a global business network working toward the vision of a maritime industry free of corruption—was founded in 2011 by a small group of companies. It was created with the recognition that for many years, the shipping industry has faced a difficult issue: When a ship travels in and out of ports, there is an opportunity to ask for illegal payments.

For example, one captain told us recently:

“The customs officer threatened to delay the ship and fine us US$60,000 for an error on the luboil [lubrication oil] declaration. Then he asked us for US$7,000 to help us have no problem.”

These corrupt demands are bad for shipping companies, as they can lead to delays or other commercial consequences for those who stood their ground. They are bad for the ports and governments, who acquire a reputation for corruption and have friction in the trading environment. Above all, they are bad for the ships’ captains and crews, who come under pressure to reject demands yet face threats, intimidation, and sometimes violence when they try to do so.

MACN started small, but it’s not small today: In 2018, MACN was delighted to welcome its 100th member. Members come from across the shipping value chain and include the largest vessel owners and operators, as well as associate members like companies that provide agents for ships entering ports. Collectively, MACN members represent over 25 percent of total global tonnage.

A bigger membership means a stronger collective voice when speaking with governments, ports, and customs: With over 100 members, we have real power to bring to the table and push for change. It means more resources to deliver tools and resources to members. And ultimately, it means greater impact and a better operating environment for those on the front line—the captains and crews.

A bigger membership means a stronger collective voice when speaking with governments, ports, and customs: With over 100 members, we have real power to bring to the table and push for change.

Here are some of the things we have been proud to accomplish in 2018 and three reasons why we would love for you to join us.

Collective Action

MACN’s collective action in Argentina has resulted in the successful adoption of a new regulatory framework for dry bulk shipping. This year, according to MACN data submitted through our anonymous incident reporting mechanism, corruption incidents in Argentina have decreased by more than 90 percent. This has been driven in part by high-level support for the new regulatory framework from the customs authorities and also from high-level politicians, including the Argentine President.

Elsewhere, we have completed our collective action project in Nigeria, which was supported by (among others) the Danish Maritime Foundation, the Orient Fond, and Lauritzen Fonden. The project included training over 1,000 government officials and developing a training course on ethics for government officials. We are proud to work with local partner Soji Apampa, founder of The Convention on Business Integrity Ltd.

MACN is also preparing to launch a collective action in India, with a port integrity campaign through which vessels will prominently display signs and posters co-signed by the government about the “Say No” policy and opposition to corruption.

Culture of Integrity

In addition to collaborating with members and stakeholders to find solutions in corruption hot-spots, MACN seeks to influence the wider culture to ensure lasting change. In 2018, MACN was delighted to present its work to the Facilitation Committee (FAL) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). This was a major step in engaging the broader maritime community, and MACN is following up through a cross-industry working group.

MACN also spoke at several major conferences this year, including Transparency International’s International Anti-Corruption Conference in Copenhagen.

Finally, MACN was invited to provide testimony at the U.K. House of Lords on the U.K. Bribery Act’s effect on the maritime industry. You can watch a recording of the session here.

Our Impact

We’re delighted to see that the word is spreading, and our impact is growing. Around the world, corrupt demands in hot-spots are decreasing, and where demands are still being made, our members are better prepared, with stronger policies, more resources, and the best practices of their peers.  

But don’t just take our word for it. We asked some of our members why they joined MACN, what its value was, and how it can enable fair trade to the benefit of society and all stakeholders. Watch the video below to hear from them, and if you would like to get involved, contact us.

Blog | Wednesday April 30, 2025

A Message from Aron Cramer, BSR President and CEO

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Video Transcript

The world is experiencing a staggering degree of change and uncertainty right now.

Some have said that this is not no longer an era of change, it's a change of eras.

No organization amidst all of this change has all the tools that they need in their toolbox and I'm convinced that BSR is most helpful for companies when we not only bring to bear what our amazing team of almost 200 people bring, but also work within the broader ecosystem so we can bring together complimentary resources and perspectives, and networks to help companies make progress at a time of great headwinds.

Business leaders succeed when they have a sense of vision. And a vision forward, not just for 2025, but for well beyond, has to be about companies that take their impacts on society very seriously, has to take seriously the challenges that they will face if our environment does not deliver the kinds of natural resources that we need to use and need to use wisely, and ignores the intersection of business and society. Put more positively, these are all things that create massive opportunities for innovation, massive opportunities for strategic advantage, and massive opportunities to ensure resilience at a time when the change is so intense, resilience is not just a buzzword, it is an absolutely essential value that companies really need.

The best way through the current environment, which indeed is challenging, is together.

The best way through the current environment, which indeed is challenging, is together. And so, we look forward to working with you, to hearing from you, to devise solutions, figure out new collaborations, and make sense of this world together, because that has always been the way that BSR has been the most valuable and I believe it is exactly the right model for us to work towards together in this moment.

Blog | Tuesday August 22, 2017

Turning the Internet Green: A Progress Update from BSR's Future of Internet Power

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Data centers—the large facilities housing networked computer server systems that keep the internet running—accounted for nearly two percent of all energy use in the United States in 2014. With more and more business being conducted in the cloud, and with the internet playing an ever-more-prominent role in societies around the world, energy demands for these centers are only expected to grow.  

Increasing the use of renewable energy to power data centers can therefore have a strong positive impact on corporate, regional, and national sustainability efforts. That’s why some of the world’s most influential internet companies—including Adobe, eBay, Facebook, HPE, Salesforce, and Symantec—are working through BSR’s Future of Internet Power initiative toward a bold vision: an internet powered by 100 percent renewable energy. Following completion of the initiative's fourth year of work, we’re taking a moment to look at what we have achieved recently and to highlight our ongoing efforts.

Corporate Colocation and Cloud Buyers’ Principles

Last July we successfully developed and launched the Corporate Colocation and Cloud Buyers’ Principles. Through these Principles, customers of data center colocation and cloud services set out six criteria that they expect their data center service providers to meet to help achieve sustainability goals. What’s more, signatories to the Principles intend to give preference to providers engaging in these Principles, which include delivering monthly data on energy consumption and engaging in advocacy efforts around renewable energy.

Thanks to a strong collaborative effort, 21 companies, including several data center service providers, have signed the Principles. This sends a strong collective message for the future of the industry that data center sustainability is good business. As signatories, such as Bank of America, Etsy, and Intuit, are making clear, addressing the carbon footprint of their data is not just important to the technology sector: Any company that has an online presence or relies on data center and cloud services can benefit—and can play a role in creating a more sustainable internet—by signing the Principles.

To build on this success, Future of Internet Power will be developing a toolkit to accompany the Principles. This toolkit will offer a practical, step-by-step guide for putting the Principles into practice, using examples and case studies to show how partnerships between a data center or cloud user and service provider can ensure that both parties have incentives and resources to reduce energy consumption and increase renewable energy use.  

White Paper: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Accounting, Renewable Energy Purchases, and Zero-Carbon Reporting

More recently, we have worked closely with the World Resources Institute (WRI) to produce a white paper addressing the issue of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting, renewable energy procurement, and reporting in the data center sector. Research for this paper highlights the issue of double-counting scope emissions and subsequent zero-carbon claims, specifically when both data center service providers and their customers classify the same GHG emissions related to the data center as their own scope 2 emissions. Given the current accounting and reporting standards of WRI's GHG Protocol, this double-counting becomes problematic when both the data center provider and the customer want to make a zero-carbon claim related to a renewable energy purchase and scope 2 emissions at a particular facility. We will continue to work with WRI and other industry stakeholders to establish clear GHG accounting and zero-carbon reporting guidance for all parties.

Renewable Energy Buyers’ Alliance

Lastly, to strengthen our public advocacy for renewable energy more generally, we will continue to work closely with our co-founders of the Renewable Energy Buyers’ Alliance (REBA): Rocky Mountain Institute’s Business Renewables Center, the World Wildlife Fund, and WRI. Through this partnership, we can work with a network of larger companies to help scale renewable energy and reach REBA’s collective goal to help corporations purchase 60GW of additional renewable energy in the US by 2025. Earlier this year, REBA was awarded the Corporate Eco Forum’s C.K. Prahalad Award for demonstrating how collaboration is critical to widespread adoption of renewable energy.

On September 17-19, we will co-host the 2017 REBA Summit, which will gather 400 energy buyers, service providers, developers, financiers, nonprofit organizations, and utilities in Santa Clara, California, ahead of GreenBiz’s VERGE17 conference and expo, to identify opportunities to accelerate corporate procurement of renewable energy. We look forward to continuing the conversation with our Future of Internet Power members and the greater REBA network at the summit.

Submit registration requests for the 2017 REBA Summit on the GreenBiz website.

Blog | Wednesday March 15, 2017

A New Tool to Help Companies Close the Gender Gap

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At the current rate of change, it will take more than 100 years to achieve full gender equality. The UN’s High Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, which includes leaders from business, the UN, government, and women’s organizations, reported last autumn that progress has been “far too slow.” And a recent McKinsey study highlights the fact that while many companies are making top-level commitments to women’s empowerment and gender equality, few companies have matched commitments with concrete plans integrated throughout the business. As a result, companies are missing out on tremendous potential gains across their business—from improved performance and retention of employees, to innovation, to expansion to new markets.

With so much clear evidence of the social, moral, and business case for promoting gender equality, what is needed to accelerate the pace of change and for companies to take intentional, ambitious action? One challenge we’ve heard from companies is identifying the right entry point for their company—essentially: “Where do I start?”

A new tool released today is intended to begin answering that question. The WEPs Gender Gap Analysis Tool helps the global business community identify gaps in its performance on gender equality and enables companies to make informed decisions on setting goals and strategies. Inspired by the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) initiative, the tool is a joint project of the UN Global Compact, UN Women, the Multilateral Investment Fund of the IDB, and the Inter-American Investment Corporation, and is supported by the Governments of Japan and Germany, The Coca-Cola Company, BSR, Itaipu, and KPMG.

The tool is grounded in the WEPs global framework, which helps companies empower women in the workplace, marketplace, and community. BSR signed the WEPs in 2015 to uphold best practices in our own organization, as well as to work with our member companies to promote, share, and scale best practices on women’s empowerment. Since we signed the WEPs, we joined its Leadership Group to contribute to the promotion and uptake of the WEPs by our network of member companies. We’re pleased to be among 38 of our BSR members in joining the WEPs initiative—and more than 1,400 companies globally.

As many of our members know, women’s empowerment is a central focus for BSR, and through our women’s empowerment practice, we work with companies to catalyze effective and ambitious action. Our women’s empowerment practice draws on more than 10 years of experience working on global women’s issues. Developing practical strategies, tools, and solutions with companies is one prong of our strategy.

Through our work on the WEPs tool, we are adding another resource to assist companies to take action on women’s empowerment. BSR and our partners designed the tool to translate the WEPs from principles into action through two key features.

First, the tool provides a broad overview of areas in which companies affect women. The tool asks a number of questions, including around companies’ leadership commitment and workplace policies and programs to support women, as well as a companies’ approach to supply chain, product development, CSR, and more. Companies and gender equality experts identified these areas during 12 global consultations with more than 170 companies.

Second, the tool helps companies understand how far they’ve gone in each area. Have companies made a formal commitment in a particular area, such as business relationships with women-owned businesses? Are they implementing practices to improve their performance? Are they measuring impact and ultimately sharing results with their board or external stakeholders? The tool provides a checklist for companies to see what action looks like across commitment, implementation, measurement, and transparency.

Initial feedback on the tool has been positive. Through the consultation phase, as well as a pilot with an additional 20 companies, we’ve worked to make the tool reflect real-world business practices. During the pilot phase, companies liked that the tool covers broad points of analysis of how a company takes action on gender equality. The tool also inspired internal conversations across the business about “what good looks like.”

By applying the tool, companies will not only have a better understanding of their own status, they will also be equipped to take the next step. BSR now offers additional services to help companies understand the tool’s results, identify priority investments, design and implement a women’s empowerment strategy, and measure impact.

Although much work remains to achieve gender equality, the launch of the new WEPs tool is one resource to make progress. We look forward to supporting companies to take stock of their current performance, and we hope that, in a few years, the tool will evolve to reflect emerging, leading examples of corporate practice. 

Blog | Monday February 20, 2017

Building a Culture of Integrity to Transform the Maritime Industry

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The Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) is a global business network working toward the vision of a maritime industry free of corruption that enables fair trade to the benefit of society at large. In the last five years, MACN has developed and shared practical tools and best practices on anticorruption and has initiated and implemented collective actions. Designed in collaboration with external stakeholders, such as port authorities and local governments, these collective actions have resulted in reductions in demands for facilitation payments in the Suez Canal, new regulations in Argentina that make it more difficult for officials to demand bribes, and improved ease of operations in Lagos, Nigeria, with the implementation of standardized operating procedures and grievance mechanisms. Thanks to the impacts of its capability-building and collective action programs, MACN has become a preeminent example of collaboration for tackling bribery and corruption.

The network’s rapid growth in the last five years has required MACN to adapt quickly and react to input from its members to determine its focus on collective action and capability-building. This agility will remain a key feature of the network. However, MACN is also launching a revised strategy to provide a clear framework for increasing its impact and global reach. The strategy expands and solidifies the work MACN has undertaken to date and is divided into three pillars, the “three Cs”: collective action, capability-building, and culture of integrity.

With its new “culture of integrity” pillar, MACN is setting out to completely transform the maritime industry. Rather than resolving issues as they arise or worsen, MACN now aims to shift the integrity culture of the maritime sector to a point where corruption is no longer entertained as a possibility in any port.

Why is MACN focusing on culture? It’s useful to consider a parallel with the maritime industry’s approach to operational safety—an area of direct relevance to the network. MACN captains and crews continue to face direct threats to their personal safety from corrupt officials when bringing ships into port, as the following testimony from one of our members indicates:

“This call during berthing, the [tug boat] pilot boarded the vessel after making the usual request for cigarettes. The request was declined by the vessel … [Later] I noticed that the stern was moving out … I knew something was wrong, and I asked the second mate to check the tug, only to be told that the aft tug had cast off the ship’s line and had left … It was totally unprofessional both for the pilot to leave and for the tug boat to cast off the line and leave without informing the vessel. Holding the ships to ransom and endangering the crew and vessel for what—a carton of cigarettes.”

As MACN members know—many through direct involvement in safety implementation—the maritime industry has spent a great deal of time and resources on safety measures and policies, with the aim of ensuring that our seafarers and offshore colleagues return home safely.

However, the industry has also long recognized that while providing personal protective equipment (PPE) and safety management systems (trainings, processes, toolbox talks, and forms) is a vital first step, it is not enough. Maritime companies clearly understand that to eliminate incidents, the organization must develop a culture of safety that governs every aspect of working life for all employees, whether they are based in an office, on an oil rig, or onboard a vessel. The mindset of the company and of its entire value chain governs the strength of its approach to safety.

This holds true for efforts to eliminate corruption. MACN members have led the charge and played a pioneering role in developing tools, trainings, and procedures to build capabilities internally and to drive the change externally. However, these will only take us so far. MACN members recognize that, as with safety, it is the culture that governs deep-seated change. By working explicitly on integrity culture programs, MACN will ensure a long-term, sustainable change of mindset across the industry, laying the groundwork to realize its vision: a maritime industry free of corruption. 

More than 80 shippers and carriers, including many of the biggest players in the maritime industry, are a part of MACN. The power of MACN—its ability to influence legislation or drive change in ports—comes from the breadth and depth of its member base. These companies are creating a simpler, more efficient, and safer environment in which to operate; at the same time, they are helping themselves and each other by sharing their learnings. If you would like to join the movement for a maritime industry free of corruption, don’t hesitate to get in touch.   

This blog is part of our February spotlight on collaboration. To find out more about BSR’s Collaborative Initiatives, read our overview blog or visit the Collaboration page.

Case Studies | Friday June 3, 2011

Driving Innovation Through Partnerships

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Since BSR’s founding, we have been strongly committed to achieving our mission through powerful partnerships. BSR’s Partnership Development team is dedicated to catalyzing collaboration between business and social and environmental innovators in the public and nonprofit sectors to make progress on systemic sustainable development challenges.

With grant support from public and corporate foundations, governments, and multilateral institutions, we design unique partnerships on topics ranging from women’s health to the environmental impacts of port operations. By working with funders ranging from a Swedish aid agency to the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, BSR leverages “venture capital,” our member company network, and our own expertise as well as the expertise of our diverse project partners to help solve development challenges in emerging economies.

HERproject | www.herproject.org

We expanded our factory- and farm-based women’s health training program—HERproject—with a major investment from the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency and ongoing support from the Levi Strauss Foundation. This support allowed BSR to link member companies with local partners who designed and provided training for female workers on health-related issues in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Kenya from our original base in China, Egypt, India, Pakistan, and Vietnam. These training programs, now active in 50 factories, have impacted more than 70,000 women. Based on return-on-investment metrics, this training has not only brought improved worker health and awareness, it has led to reduced absenteeism, lower turnover, and increased productivity.

CiYuan (China Philanthropy Incubator) | ciyuan.bsr.org

With support from the U.S. Department of State, CiYuan is designed both to increase the impact of social investments in China, and to build the capacity and expertise of Chinese nonprofit organizations and their project partners to fund and implement additional efforts. For example, BSR is supporting a new, cross-sector collaboration that includes a multinational company (HP), a U.S.-based nonprofit (the Taproot Foundation), a local nonprofit (Huizeren), and a local foundation (the Narada Foundation) to advance the pro bono service model in China. Our hope is that this model will allow companies and civil society organizations to share skills and build stronger organizations capable of partnering with a wider range of partners.

Migration Linkages

A four-year program in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, our Migration Linkages initiative helps protect the rights of migrant workers who are moving between developing countries. We connect multinational companies and their business partners with civil society groups, international organizations, labor unions, and governments to make the global migration system more transparent and advance responsible labor practices. In 2010, we launched a pilot program to protect human rights in the recruitment process for migrant workers in Malaysia and in the Persian Gulf.

Green Ports and Energy Efficiency

With new funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and building on our experience with BSR’s Clean Cargo Working Group, this project is aimed at evaluating the environmental performance of freight carriers, and working to make ports and terminal operators more sustainable. As a first step, we identified ports’ most significant sustainability issues and developed a framework for ports to consistently report on their performance on those issues. This funding also will allow BSR to expand our Energy Efficiency Partnership, a China-based effort to enhance the energy efficiency of small- and medium-sized enterprises in the Pearl River Delta.

Major Funders in 2010: Private, Corporate, Government

• British Consulate General in Guangzhou
• GE Foundation
• International Finance Corporation
• Levi Strauss Foundation
• MacArthur Foundation
• Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency
• U.S. Department of State

Blog | Thursday September 21, 2017

Redefining Sustainable Business: Radical Collaboration, Inside and Out 

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As our CEO Aron Cramer articulated in his recent post, our continually evolving landscape means “a new agenda for business, new tools for sustainability leaders, and, in a world of political volatility, a new approach to business leadership” are urgently needed.

The world is increasingly looking to businesses—and business leaders—to chart a path forward on a range of critical topics, from diversity and inclusion to climate action.

One key element of this new approach will be a dramatically increased role for collaboration, both within organizations and between companies and their stakeholders.

For example, at BSR we are engaging member companies in the development of formal strategies and plans to understand and address vulnerability to climate change and related impacts across their entire value chains. These rapidly growing efforts aimed at building climate resilience provide a useful case study of what sustainable business will increasingly require.

While we are still in the early stages of this work, two things have become clear.

First, business can’t do it alone.

The challenge of building resilience to climate change—as so painfully illustrated by recent extreme weather events around the world—is the very definition of a “systems challenge.” Most companies have some degree of business continuity planning in place focused on the “hardening” of physical company infrastructure. This is of course critically important, but it is just the beginning of a journey that must also address the following questions:

• Even if our facilities are secured, will our employees be able to make it work?
• Will our suppliers be able to provide the inputs we need to maintain production?
• How well equipped are the communities we operate in to restore/resume operations and commerce in the aftermath of a storm or other disruptive event?
• What investments can and should we make in building critical infrastructure and capabilities across our value chain—and what is our best role vis-a-vis public sector and other players?

Even more important than the increased expectations of business is the stark reality that business cannot achieve its objectives without working with other sectors. Specifically, business needs to step up its approach to advocacy and collaboration, using the full range of its core competencies to enable and influence stakeholders in the public sector and civil society.

And the sustainability department certainly can’t do it alone.

This leads us to a second, more internally focused point about addressing resilience and other critical systemic challenges. The scope and complexity of issues and efforts necessitate a whole organization approach to sustainability, leveraging the combined competencies of multiple functions and disciplines. Here are just a few examples of how departments across companies are engaging on climate resilience:

• A dramatically expanded approach to enterprise risk management, with participation from strategic planning, is critical to development and acceptance of an expended approach to risk assessment/management.
• Operations and transport/logistics teams assess vulnerability across company-owned operations and networks, while global supply chain and procurement organizations do the same for key input providers, and these departments will be the owners of programs and partnerships to address their respective vulnerabilities.
• Public affairs and government relations teams evaluate climate-related regulatory and policy risks and determine how best to address them in the context of companies’ overall public policy objectives.
• The human resources team develops enhancements to workplace policies, training, and capability-building.
• A company’s foundation identifies how to allocate resources and pursue partnerships key to the implementation of the resilience strategy.

What does this mean for CSOs and sustainability teams?

Sustainability leaders and their teams will play important roles in enabling other parts of the business, both internally through cross-functional work and externally via significantly greater collaboration and advocacy. In order to do this, however, most sustainability teams will need to increase their focus on organizational change and capability-building.

Sustainability teams will also need to leverage their external engagement and relationships with unusual actors to help other departments spot trends and proactively respond to issues as they arise. They will be called upon to incubate new public-private projects and partnerships, too—sometimes in conjunction with their company foundations. The UN Sustainable Development Goals in particular can serve as a vehicle for sustainability teams to build coalitions around key issues and priorities for the organization.

The bottom line: Sustainability departments need to embrace and promote a spirit of “radical collaboration” if they are to achieve their objectives in a rapidly changing environment.

Join us to continue the conversation on how business leads at the BSR Conference 2017 in Huntington Beach, California, from October 22-24.

This week, we are featuring several blog posts about the role of collaboration in shaping our climate future. Follow @BSRnews on Twitter for updates from Global Goals Week and Climate Week NYC; see our recent blog post for the full list of where we’ll be.

Blog | Tuesday April 16, 2019

Supply Chain Sustainability in a Rapidly Changing World

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Ten years ago, Norway-based Telenor Group transformed its approach to supply chain sustainability. To mark this anniversary, Telenor commissioned BSR to review lessons learned and consider what direction both Telenor and the broader telecoms industry should travel over the next 10 years. Telenor’s supply chains include thousands of suppliers around the world, which provide goods and services ranging from IT equipment and devices from global suppliers to a wide range of local services needed to build and run the network, including construction and maintenance. In addition, suppliers are needed in areas such as digital services, brand and marketing support, and outsourced customer services and business processes. 

Informed by this work, today we are sharing our thoughts on relevant global shifts transforming telecommunications supply chains and best practices for companies in the industry to improve supply chain sustainability in the future. 

Three Global Trends  

Three key trends are likely to influence the future of sustainable supply chains in the telecommunications industry—new technologies and digitization, climate resilience, and large-scale human migration.  

1. New technologies: Innovations and digital advances are revolutionizing supply chain management across industries, and more companies today are using technologies like automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, blockchain, and augmented reality to supplement traditional approaches. There are opportunities to consider how new technologies can increase financial incentives for suppliers that are performing well on social and environmental indicators—for example, blockchain technology and financial technology solutions are making it easier for companies to gear their supply chain finance mechanisms more readily toward incentives for these high-performing suppliers. 
2. Climate resilience: While it’s impossible to predict the exact effects of climate change, it’s clear that supply chains are vulnerable to global warming, especially for those companies with operations and infrastructure in countries that are already experiencing more frequent and severe weather events. Over the past decade, the telecommunications industry has done an impressive job building climate resilience, and networks are increasingly able to withstand severe weather events. Looking to the future, telecommunications companies have an opportunity to expand their approach to climate resilience by focusing on opportunities to deploy telecommunications networks and digital services in ways that support the resilience of other industries.  
3. Large-scale human migration: Companies will also need to prepare for the burgeoning trend of human migration at a massive scale. More than 240 million people now live outside their country of birth, and a record number of people have become refugees. This is already affecting many companies. While local contexts vary significantly, migrant labor presents risks in both emerging economies as well as in developed markets. One of the biggest risks is that migrant workers represent a vulnerable group requiring special protection. Often, these people may not be aware of their rights, or they are willing to take jobs where rules and regulations are not followed. As a result, they might be paid under the table in cash, they might be paid below the legal minimum wage, or their employers may force them to work excessive hours or in unsafe conditions. It is important for companies to identify and eliminate these violations, and it’s also important for companies to invest in strategies to create decent jobs that integrate migrants into the workforce, develop their skills, and give them opportunities to make positive contributions to society. 

What Companies Can Do 

We recommend companies dig deeper on impact—encourage more local ownership, connect more deeply on key issues, and create change for rights-holders. 

A dedicated company’s efforts in an era of rapidly accelerated change has the potential to create value for its business, its stakeholders, and society at large. Our recent work with Telenor illustrates how companies can act within their own boundaries, enable relationships with stakeholders, and influence policy change to advance sustainable business goals, drawing from the “Act-Enable-Influence” framework articulated in Redefining Sustainable Business: Management for a Rapidly Changing World.

We recommend companies dig deeper on impact—encourage more local ownership, connect more deeply on key issues, and create change for rights-holders. We also suggest more proactive engagement with global peers and suppliers in collaborative efforts, such as advocacy for necessary policy changes.  

Our additional guidance for companies includes the following: 

• Companies can act by taking local context into account in risk assessments, audits, inspections, and capacity-building, as well as by prioritizing efforts based on risk to the rights-holder (i.e., supply chain employee), rather than risk to the business. This focus on risk to the rights-holder rather than risk to the business is consistent with the expectations in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. 
• Companies can enable change by creating and participating in local collaboration platforms among telecommunications companies and their suppliers, as well as with other industries and key stakeholders. This can also include making the case for more telecommunications operators, including local competitors, to join relevant industry associations and strengthen their ability to drive industrywide change.  
• The telecommunications industry can influence change by adopting an advocacy agenda that represents the complete company and industry value chain. This means promoting rule of law and good governance, especially effective enforcement of labor, health, safety, environment, and anticorruption regulations.  

If you’d like to connect with us to learn more about our work on the future of supply chain sustainability, please don’t hesitate to contact us. 

Blog | Thursday March 22, 2018

Why Hiring 100,000 Impact Workers Is Only the Beginning: Interview with The Rockefeller Foundation

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This week, the Global Impact Sourcing Coalition (GISC) challenged the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry to hire 100,000 new impact workers by the end of 2020. The group also announced the launch of the world’s first Impact Sourcing Standard, designed to increase the adoption of Impact Sourcing by setting out uniform criteria for what it entails.

At the launch, we caught up with Mamadou Biteye, Managing Director, Africa Regional Office, The Rockefeller Foundation, as he reflected on the development of the GISC and its progress to date.

Mark Williams: What need led to the formation of the Global Impact Sourcing Coalition?

Mamadou Biteye: Economic inequality is one of the most threatening global challenges of our time, jeopardizing stability and social progress worldwide. The World Bank estimates that 2.1 billion people in the developing world are surviving on less than US$3.10 a day, and more than half of the world's poorest people are in sub-Saharan Africa. For these individuals and their families, income inequality creates a cycle of poverty that can persist for generations. One of the most sustainable means to reduce such inequality is to ensure that poor and vulnerable populations have access to formal employment and training, giving them the opportunity to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. GISC is trying to do this by creating access to opportunities of gainful employment.

Williams: How did the GISC come into being?

Biteye: As part of its Digital Jobs Africa initiative, whose aim was to catalyze new, sustainable employment opportunities and skills development for African youth through ICT, The Rockefeller Foundation had been working with the private sector for six years to influence their adoption of Impact Sourcing in their hiring practices. We later partnered with BSR, a global non-profit organization that works with its network of more than 250 member companies to build a just and sustainable world. BSR is today the secretariat and facilitator of the Coalition.

Williams: How has the GISC grown since its launch?

Biteye: In September 2016, The Rockefeller Foundation and BSR launched the GISC with 20 founding members, including companies and partner organizations. An additional 23 organizations have since joined. GISC’s member companies have a combined workforce of over 1.6 million BPO workers, representing an estimated 10 percent of the global industry.

Williams: How important is the collaboration for the BPO industry and can other industries follow its lead?

Biteye: The Rockefeller Foundation initially targeted the BPO industry in areas such as call centers and data entry, due to their fast growth and high potential for job creation. Today, leading BPO providers have become early champions of Impact Sourcing and are eager to prove the business case for this inclusive hiring practice. While the initial uptake has been a major success in the BPO sector, Impact Sourcing is applicable across sectors and across industries. The BPO sector serves as an excellent forerunner.

Williams: How does The Rockefeller Foundation support industry collaboration?

Biteye: For more than a century, we have worked through partnerships to create the change we want to see and improve the lives of poor and vulnerable. This has been the case not only via Digital Jobs Africa and GISC, but across many of our initiatives at The Rockefeller Foundation, so it is truly in our DNA to bring different organizations together and facilitate their working together to address our challenges for greater impact. We have been fortunate to work with very capable organizations, BSR being one, to catalyze our funding and especially our impact.

Williams: What do you predict for the future of Impact Sourcing?

Biteye: Since the formation of the GISC, we have seen the increasing positive social impact that can be achieved through Impact Sourcing and the power of procurement. The Global Impact Sourcing Challenge will take this ambition to the next level and, together with the new Impact Sourcing Standard, will be the catalyst for a global increase in inclusive hiring practices.

To learn more, please email gisc@bsr.org, and visit our website at gisc.bsr.org. Read more about how The Rockefeller Foundation and BSR approach private-sector collaboration for sustainable development.