This website is the Dutch Online Portal for Corporate (Social) Responsibility, Sustainability, and ESG. Most of the news items and pages are therefore in Dutch. But there are also several interesting news items in english. Visit also the english CSR bookstore on this web portal.
What is CSR?
(Source: MVO Nederland)
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) means that a company takes responsibility for the effects of its business activities on people, the environment and business operations. The company makes conscious choices to find a balance between People, Planet and Profit. Companies could even go a step further and focus on new market opportunities, growth and innovation with profit for people, society and the environment. Now and in the future.
CSR is the benchmark for doing business in the 21st century. The starting principles here are:
- CSR is an integral vision on entrepreneurship, whereby the company creates value in economic (Profit), ecological (Planet) and social (People) fields.
- CSR is embedded in all business processes. With every business decision, the different stakeholder interests are weighed up: the interests of the persons, companies and organisations involved. CSR is tailor-made. The CSR activities are different for every company. It depends on company size, sector, culture and on company strategy.
- CSR is a process, not a final destination. The objectives pursue change over time and with every business decision. The company is looking for achievable steps to give shape to social responsibility.
ESG as a measurable sustainability assessment
ESG comes hand in hand with CSR. The acronym refers to Environment, Social, and Governance, forming a quantifiable means of measuring a company’s overall sustainability performance. There is a natural transition from CSR to ESG, as CSR puts focus on building accountability whilst ESG quantifies existing accountability. In addition, the latter is used more frequently by investors as ESG builds a credible ‘score’ based on collected data.