Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Fourth International Conference of The Consumer Citizenship Network, Sofija, Bulgaristan, 1 - 03 Mart 2007, ss.55-67
In spite of the fact that there are many voluntary or regulatory international, regional or local declarations, conventions, standards, codes of conducts and initiatives, there is no united global law system so far (Mutlu, 2005; 394) that could provide binding and enforceable legislation. There are no effective international institutions to enforce regulation of corporations, especially the activities of multinational corporations (MNCs) and transnational corporations (TNCs), to set minimum standards. The establishment of institutions such as the United Nations Environment Program represents an attempt to develop a global rule-making and rule implementation infrastructure. The long term objectives of this infrastructure can be seen to include the protection of human (including worker) rights, the eradication of poverty, environmental protection, encouragement of democracy and free elections around the world, economic development and trade development, including the free flow of goods and services across borders. In a way, the fact that these long term objectives remain very much a “work in progress” is a major explanation for why the concept of corporate social responsibility has risen to prominence. Corporate social responsibility attempts to address most of these same objectives through non-state, private sector actors and approaches (Working Report on SR; 2004, p.8). CSR is a concept which is closely linked to the ethical manners of the companies towards all the stakeholders. The company should be socially responsible as well as economically responsible by improving the standards of living in the local community. The Strategic Advisory Group on CSR of International Organization for Standardization (ISO), describes it as “a balanced approach for organizations to address economic, social and environmental issues in a way that aims to benefit people, community and society” (ISO, 2002). The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has determined (http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/poiteiitm21.en.pdf) that privatization, deregulation, and liberalization create more space for firms to pursue their corporate 56 56 objectives. Multinational and transnational corporations are the principal forces for advancing globalization. They are also seen to be the most important beneficiaries of the liberalization of investment and trade regimes, with rising influence on the development of the world economy and its constituent parts. This expansion of action, space and rights of corporations unfortunately did not lead all companies to have and implement CSR in the advancement of the common good for all stakeholders. The more corporations’ activities are delocalized, the less they are open to democratic control by the affected stakeholders. Transparency can be defined as the degree to which corporate decisions, policies, activities and impacts are acknowledged and made visible to relevant stakeholders. Companies should disclose social and environmental information and include social issues as part of their strategic goals and plans wherever they operate. From the perspective of stakeholders, websites are seen as the easiest tool for them to be better informed and occasionally involved in corporations. Coupland (2003) declared that the corporate website, as an example of a genre of organizational communication, is recognized as social action on behalf of, or in the name of, the members of the community of stakeholders. Websites function as a communication tool to indicate the nature of the corporation in a manner which is easily accessible to the stakeholders who would like to contribute to humanizing good governance. It can be argued that the most informative channel where stakeholders can get fast and legal data about the company activities is websites. An investor can analyze the reports of the company and look through the social or environmental activities to evaluate the social performance of the company as well as the economic performance of the company. A customer can decide on the accountability of the company, can read about the production process and decide on the purchase. According to Wellford (1997), the corporate website, as a genre of communication, is unusual in that its visitors have diverse interests. Groups of people who are concerned with ethical issues would actively search the website to investigate the company stance.