Sponsored feature: Companies with a Conscience

Should Companies Care? Is ultimately the question raised by Klaus Schwab the Executive Chairman and Founder of the World Economic Forum.

Should they have a moral compass to guide their financial aspirations? Should they feel a weight of responsibility to moderate and guide their actions, ensuring that they contribute positively to the communities they inhabit, as well as making money?

The World Economic Forum and partners have been working to identify how a company should function within a society and what rules it should have to abide by. In 1971 they came up with the stakeholder concept, an idea that a company has a responsibility not only to their stake holders but to their impact on the world around them. Essentially the idea is that companies should be driven not only by making money but also contributing positivity to society. Ultimately they advocated the stance that companies should care: both about their profits but also, vitally about their sustainability. They argued that the two should in fact go hand-in hand within a viable business model.

The World Economic Forum asserts that both the social and environmental factors of a business are vital in the way they are perceived by investors and stakeholders and that the way they interact and affect the society they trade in, is not an "add-on" but an essential element of their business structure.

The business world is notoriously cut-throat and many companies are seen to drive recklessly in a single minded pursuit of financial gain. In modern times, the moral repercussions of a company's actions are taken on board by both the consumer and the shareholder when they interact with a business. It is vital when a company changes its policies to benefit the world around them that they do so not only because they want to be perceived as a company making positive contributions, but because as a business they genuinely care about their impact on society. This idea is known as corporate global citizenship and is rooted in the mission statement of the World Economic Forum.

Corporate citizenship must be part of the company's business model and companies should invest in growth drivers, even in financially uncertain times, as well as maintaining transparency with regulators such as government models.

Cynthia Carroll, in an attempt to define corporate citizenship referred to a statement made by the founder of her company in 1954 that outlines the company's business ethos: to generate profits for its shareholders, but more importantly to actually contribute on a long term basis to the communities in which they function. Carroll referred to the fact that in 2009 the company focussed on social responsibility, spending 72% more than the previous year on the sector. She mentions that the company began to provide HIV/AIDS testing for its employees and their families as well as contractors and their families and they now also promote the use of the sustainability by their suppliers.

This ethic should be threaded throughout the company business model and the business should be seen as having the safety of its employees, stakeholders and the community in which its function as something close to its heart. The forum advocates the view that companies should not only change their policies for the perception of the public but should incorporate the views into their company ethos and model.

The forum essentially advocates corporate global citizenship as a conscientious attitude that is ultimately in the company's own self- interest as their future existence is dependent upon the well-being and stability of the political, environmental, social and economic landscape in which they trade.