Non-profit groups and unions in Italy could do much more to press for ethical corporate behaviour
Corporate responsibility is a bottom-up activity in Italy. Faced with government apathy, a number of organisations endeavour to spark the interest of companies in corporate responsibility through advice, practical tools and award schemes.
The focus is commonly on social themes. Italy compares poorly with northern and western European countries on issues such as women and minorities in the workplace, discrimination and the treatment of older workers. In the European Union, only Malta has a lower proportion of women in work, according to the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.
One of the organisations pushing for improvements is Valore Sociale, which is backed by a number of Italy’s leading consumer and charitable groups. Mariarosa Cutillo, Valore Sociale’s secretary-general, says the traditional Italian view of the family means the expectation is that mothers will stay at home, rather than look for work. “Gender balance is very much lacking,” she says.
Marisa Parmigiani, of another Italian non-profit corporate responsibility association, Impronta Etica, says many companies have taken on board the need for greater sustainability, for example by switching to renewable energy, because they can measure the financial benefits. But “other issues that are not directly related to efficiency can be harder [for them] to understand”.
When it comes to social issues such as promoting a better work-life balance, companies still “see it as spending money. They cannot easily measure the return,” Parmigiani says, even though, for example, greater participation of women in the Italian workforce is “really a competitive element for our economy”.
Both Valore Sociale and Impronta Etica are based in the north of Italy, and work with relatively small groups of companies on corporate responsibility issues. Impronta Etica was founded by ATC, the public transport provider in the city of Bologna, and a number of cooperative groups. Its most prominent members are Gruppo Hera, one of Italy’s main energy and water utilities, and IMA, which makes machinery for packaging.
Local and relevant
Milan-based Valore Sociale has developed a certification scheme covering the environmental and social performance of companies. It covers similar ground to the ISO 26000 social responsibility standard, though Mariarosa Cutillo proudly notes that the Standard Valore Sociale was established in 2006, predating ISO 26000 by four years.
With 35 companies certified so far, “it’s slowly growing”, Cutillo says. The standard has spread outside Italy, with the United Arab Emirates’ Etihad Airlines deciding recently to exclusively serve organic food from a Valore Sociale-certified supplier.
Despite the work of groups such as Impronta Etica and Valore Sociale, the bottom-up pressure in Italy for corporations to behave more ethically remains limited. This is the case even though Italy is the home of initiatives such as the slow food movement, and many Italians prize quality, home-produced products, from the coffee they drink to the clothes they wear.
One of the founders of Valore Sociale is the Movimento Consumatori (Consumers’ Movement). Mariarosa Cutillo says they “push very much for transparency and accountability of companies”. But “our consumer organisations need to go further on this. They are still not very much aware of the power that they have.”
The situation is similar for environmental issues. Italy’s leading environmental organisation is Legambiente (League for the Environment). It counts 115,000 members and is a powerful voice in the public discussion on issues such as climate change, conservation and the direction of globalisation. But it lets companies off relatively lightly. Legambiente’s main priorities are influencing government policy, and mobilising its members to protect national parks, recycle lightbulbs and do other environmental good deeds.
People power can be effective in Italy, however. One Legambiente campaign called for a ban on non-biodegradable plastic shopping bags and, after several delays, the bags were prohibited from January 1 2011. The ban has since been lifted, because of a shortfall in the supply of biodegradable bags, but will be put in place again from the beginning of 2013.
Meanwhile, Italians have rejected a return to nuclear power. Italy closed down its nuclear plants in the 1980s after the Chernobyl disaster, but the previous government, under Silvio Berlusconi, put forward plans to restart nuclear generation. Berlusconi’s scheme was overwhelmingly rejected in a June 2011 referendum, though Italy’s current government of technocrats is looking again at the issue, and has said a nuclear comeback is “inevitable”.
Keep it voluntary
The limited consumer pressure on Italian companies is mirrored by unions and business federations, which emphasise a voluntary approach.
Ornella Cilona of the country’s largest union, CGIL (the Italian General Confederation of Labour) says corporate responsibility “is a voluntary choice made by the enterprises,” but that companies should involve the workers when deciding on any CR policy.
Perhaps surprisingly, CGIL has resisted the establishment of responsible business indicators that could be used to benchmark companies. “We think that the issue of social responsibility is more complex than creating indicators,” Cilona says. Instead of indicators, Italy should focus on “highlighting some important aspects related to CR, such as health and safety and the supply chain with a real multistakeholder approach”.
CGIL does believe in international standards, in particular ISO 26000, as a badge of honour that companies can strive for to prove their commitments. ISO 26000 is “a global voluntary tool we approve”, says Cilona. CGIL has also participated in EU-level discussions, and contributed to the OECD’s guidelines for multinational enterprises.
CGIL’s main concern, however, is to protect its members’ interests by forging agreements, including on corporate responsibility, with industrial sectors. Recent agreements have covered the banking, energy and textiles sectors, Cilona says.
The union’s approach seems remarkably similar to that of Italy’s main business federation, Confindustria. “National or EU [CR] policies should not interfere with companies seeking flexibility,” says Confindustria’s Paola Astorri. Like CGIL, Confindustria believes that companies should develop their own approaches, and international standards, such as the OECD’s guidelines, “represent a point of reference, especially for multinational companies operating in third-country markets”.
Though Italian companies should be left to go it alone, their CR endeavours should not be overlooked, Astorri says. “It would be quite unfair to disregard this and to consider Italy as a low-performing country.”
Performance rewarded
One initiative that is backed by Confindustria is the Sodalitas Social Award, given to companies by the Fondazione Sodalitas, a organisation that aims to be a bridge between the corporate and non-profit sectors. Sodalitas has 85 mainly multinational corporate members, including many non-Italian companies, such as Deutsche Bank and Vodafone. Sodalitas was set up in 1995 by the division of Confindustria in the northern region of Lombardy.
The 2012 Sodalitas Social Award winners, chosen from among more than 250 nominated projects, will be announced shortly. Winners in 2011 included Barilla, UniCredit and the distinctly non-Italian Ikea, which received an award for its “high accessibility” kitchens. Awards were also distributed to the public sector: the province of Cagliari, the town of Gorgonzola, and the chamber of commerce of Rimini, for a range of social and environmental projects.
UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank measured by assets, received its award for Universo Non Profit, a suite of banking services for charitable organisations. These include the ilmiodono.it website, which compiles the details of non-profit groups across Italy, and allows visitors to search according to their area of interest and make donations to the relevant organisations. UniCredit, which made a net profit of €3.7bn in 2011, notes that it generously waives its commissions on donations made via the site.