The Ratings Game
Measuring and publicizing social performance is a potentially powerful way to influence corporate behavior-assuming that the ratings are consistently measured and accurately reflect corporate social impact. Unfortunately, neither condition holds true in the current profusion of CSR checklists.
The criteria used in the rankings vary widely. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index, for example, includes aspects of economic performance in its evaluation. It weights customer service almost 50% more heavily then corporate citizenship. The equally prominent FTSE4Good Index, by contrast, contains no measures of economic performance of customer service at all. Even when criteria happen to be the same, they are invariably weighted differently in the final scoring.
Beyond the choice of criteria and their weightings lies the even more perplexing question of how to judge whether the criteria have been met. Most media, nonprofits, and investment advisory organizations have too few resources to audit a universe of complicated global corporate activities. As a result, they tend to use me measures for which data are readily and inexpensively available, even though they may not be good proxies for the social or environmental effects they are intended to reflect. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index, for example, uses the size of a company’s board as a measures of community involvement, even though size and involvement may be entirely unrelated.
Finally, even if the measures chosen accurately reflect social impact , the data are frequently unreliable. Most ratings rely on surveys whose response rates are statistically insignificant, as well as on self-reported company data that have not been verified externally. Companies with the most to hide are the least likely to respond. The result is a jumble of largely meaningless rankings, allowing almost any company to boast that it meets some measure of social responsibility-and most do.
The Ratings Game
Measuring and publicizing social performance is a potentially powerful way to influence corporate behavior-assuming that the ratings are consistently measured and accurately reflect corporate social impact. Unfortunately, neither condition holds true in the current profusion of CSR checklists.
The criteria used in the rankings vary widely. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index, for example, includes aspects of economic performance in its evaluation. It weights customer service almost 50% more heavily then corporate citizenship. The equally prominent FTSE4Good Index, by contrast, contains no measures of economic performance of customer service at all. Even when criteria happen to be the same, they are invariably weighted differently in the final scoring.
Beyond the choice of criteria and their weightings lies the even more perplexing question of how to judge whether the criteria have been met. Most media, nonprofits, and investment advisory organizations have too few resources to audit a universe of complicated global corporate activities. As a result, they tend to use me measures for which data are readily and inexpensively available, even though they may not be good proxies for the social or environmental effects they are intended to reflect. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index, for example, uses the size of a company’s board as a measures of community involvement, even though size and involvement may be entirely unrelated.
Finally, even if the measures chosen accurately reflect social impact , the data are frequently unreliable. Most ratings rely on surveys whose response rates are statistically insignificant, as well as on self-reported company data that have not been verified externally. Companies with the most to hide are the least likely to respond. The result is a jumble of largely meaningless rankings, allowing almost any company to boast that it meets some measure of social responsibility-and most do.
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..
