Today, The Leadership Forum released its first Survey of Reporting on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by Listed Companies in the Czech Republic." The survey is part of a wider regional initiative organized by East-West Management Institutes Partners for Financial Stability (PFS) Program.
The Survey of Reporting on CSR by Listed Companies in the Czech Republic was conducted during the time period August – October 2003. It investigates Czech-language information available in the 2002 annual reports and websites of 33 companies listed on the Prague Stock Exchange.
Encompassing corporate governance, environmental policies and social policies, the Czech survey employs the same template used by the PFS Program in its Survey of Reporting on CSR by the Largest Listed Companies in Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia, published in September 2003. In addition, country studies of listed companies in Hungary and Poland have been completed using the same template. (The Polish survey was published on this website on December 18, 2003. The Hungarian survey will be published in late March 2004.) As a result, the group of surveys should enable for the first time benchmarking of reporting on CSR in these countries against other countries in the European Union (EU) and elsewhere.
Survey findings include the following:
91% of Czech listed companies provide information on corporate governance structure.
82% disclose audit related information and 48% disclose shareholder rights policy.
In the environmental policy sphere, 39% report on energy and water use and 32% state whether they comply with industry, national and/or international regulations regarding environmental standards.
In the social policy sphere, 61% of listed companies disclose employee development/employee benefit policies and 58% disclose information regarding community patronage/sponsorship programs.
Starting today, the survey is available online in English at:
http://www.ewmi.hu/capitalmarkets_research.php.
About The Leadership Forum
www.leadership-forum.org/
The Leadership Forum is a private, non-profit, voluntary association located in Prague. Its mission is to promote and advocate ethical leadership in business and government in the Czech Republic and other countries in the region. The main focus is on economic, social, political and moral aspects of the public and private sector in the Czech Republic.
Leadership Forums objectives are:
To stimulate open-minded discussion of the issues to be resolved to achieve ethical leadership in business management and public administration in transition economies.
To engage business managers, public sector officials, the media, and young people, especially students, in a continuing learning process.
To debate the proper roles of markets and governments, and of competition and cooperation.
To understand the ethical elements of business and government transactions.
To develop the practice and perceive the benefits of ethical leadership.
To advocate best practices in ethical leadership to opinion leaders in business and government, and to communicate them to an informed public.
To support networks of like-minded leaders in business and government.
The Leadership Forum has established itself as an important and in many respects pivotal association of businessmen, academicians and opinion leaders. The Forum is the culmination of successful leadership development initiatives dating back to 1990. During a visit to Georgetown University that year, newly elected President Václav Havel cited the challenge facing governments and businesses in the region in transforming centrally planned economies into successful market based economies. He highlighted the need to train new generations of young executives in the ethical business leadership skills needed to support effective economic transformation. The Forum thus has as its foundation a decade-long history of executive leadership development programs sponsored by Georgetown University, The Woodstock Center at Georgetown and Charles University.
The Forum makes every effort to engage in international network of similarly minded institutes, in order to streamline the Czech Republic’s intertwining into the world intellectual environment.
About the Partners for Financial Stability (PFS) Program
The Partners for Financial Stability (PFS) Program, established in December 1999, is a cooperative program of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and East-West Management Institute (EWMI), a New York-based non-profit organization. Active in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, the PFS Program is mandated to fill remaining gaps in the institutional development of the financial sector through regional integration and cooperation, selective technical assistance programs and the practical application of lessons learned in neighboring countries. The substantive areas covered under the PFS Program are: accounting, auditing, banking, capital markets, insurance
and pension reform.
