Community, CSR management, Employees

As Community Affairs Briefing was going to press, several hundred business executives from across Europe began gathering in Copenhagen for a major conference "New Partnership for Social Cohesion". The line up of speakers and the range of workshops was impressive. That such a conference was being held attended by so many leading companies is welcome in itself, and is just another sign that corporate citizenship is not an Anglo-Saxon exception but becoming the international norm.

The significance of the conference goes further, to the venue - Scandinavia - and the organisers - the Danish government. Scandinavia was the heartland of the social democratic model, where only three sectors in society mattered: government, business and trade unions. Business created the wealth, governments taxed and spent it, unions protected the people (or at least those in work), and there was little or no room for voluntary action on social issues. Now they are searching for an alternative model. In Germany unemployment has reached a post-war high and new solutions for social cohesion are being sought.

So there is a real chance for Britain to take the lead in Europe when it assumes the Presidency of the European Union in January 1998. Here is an opportunity for community affairs managers to brief their public affairs colleagues to lobby the government to put corporate citizenship centre stage in Europe next year.

Corporate Citizenship Briefing, issue no: 36 - October, 1997