Corporate Global Citizenship is anchored in the mission of the World Economic Forum.  We believe that corporate global citizenship is fundamentally in the enlightened self-interest of global corporations since their growth, prosperity and sustainability is dependent on the state of the global political, economic, environmental and social landscape.  The license to operate in a global market and to make profits entails a responsibility of being engaged in society.

How should a company engage in society?  And, what framework should guide that engagement?

The World Economic Forum and its leading partners have been working together to develop answers to these pressing issues.

Key Endeavors Include:

• Professor Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman and Founder of the World Economic Forum, has published an article on Working with Governments and Civil Society in the January/February 2008 edition of Foreign Affairs journal, To help businesses better coordinate their approaches and improve performance, this article proposes a five-concept framework for understanding the different types of social engagement and provides clear examples for each concept.
• At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2008 in Davos, the Global Corporate Citizenship Initiative Advisory Committee to the World Economic Forum, consisting of selected corporate heads of corporate citizenship as well as renowned experts, presented a thought leadership workstream on Partnering to Strengthen Public Governance: The Leadership Challenge for CEOs and Boards.
• In 2004 the Global Corporate Citizenship Initiative (GCCI) with the support of the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) published VALUES AND VALUE: Communicating the Strategic Importance. The report “Values and Value” explores how CEOs, CFOs, and investor relations officers communicate the strategic importance of the social and environmental aspects of their firm’s performance to investors. It examines how these companies are articulating both the business case and the leadership or values case for global corporate citizenship, highlighting some of the challenges of communicating often intangible, non-financial but nevertheless quite relevant issues to owners. Based on this analysis and the experiences recounted directly by many CEOs and CFOs, the report takes note of a number of effective practices and offers a set of recommendations for those seeking to communicate the importance of corporate citizenship to shareholders and investors. 
• In January 2002, over 40 prominent CEO’s endorsed the statement Global Corporate Citizenship: The Leadership Challenge for CEOs and Boards (PDF, 206k, 16pg). The statement emphasized that leadership processes focusing on the company’s impact on society and its relationships with stakeholders are not ‘add-ons’ but are fundamental to core business operations.
• In 1971, the World Economic Forum first identified the stakeholder concept - the idea that a company has a clear responsibility to the community beyond its shareholders. Two years later, at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, the stakeholder concept became the cornerstone of the Davos Declaration, which articulated the fundamental principles of a corporation’s social and environmental responsibility.

Access additional historical highlights and reports regarding the World Economic Forum’s endeavors regarding corporate global citizenship.

For further information, please contact:
mailto:cgc@weforum.org

See Corporate Global Citizenship in action at the World Economic Forum