And the winner is ... sustainability: GIZ is a Corporate Responsibility Champion

The Bertelsmann Stiftung compiles the Corporate Responsibility Index every two years. With 187 participating companies, the index is a leading instrument for measuring corporate responsibility (CR) among German companies.

Not only was GIZ awarded the title Corporate Responsibility Champion in this year’s CR Index, it was also singled out as one of five best practice examples for its Corporate Sustainability Handprint ® (CSH). The CSH is the management tool GIZ uses to map out not only its ecological footprint but also its positive contribution – or handprint – to the four dimensions of sustainability it has defined: social responsibility, ecological balance, political participation and economic efficiency.

For the creators of the index, corporate responsibility means ‘responsible corporate behaviour in a company’s operational and strategic core processes’. The top 10 per cent of the companies surveyed earn the right to call themselves CR champions by ‘successfully implementing corporate responsibility on a broad basis’, explains the Bertelsmann Stiftung. The average index rating for this year’s champions is 829 points. ‘Since the maximum index score possible is 1,000 points, there is potential even for CR champions to improve their performance,’ the study concludes.

In its description of best practices, the Bertelsmann Stiftung emphasised that ‘GIZ, with its Corporate Sustainability Handprint, has created a framework within the company that requires all business areas to ensure corporate responsibility is integrated into their activities and to document all CR-relevant data online’. The Bertelsmann Stiftung considers the CSH to be an exemplary online instrument for measuring and steering sustainability.