Monday, 15 September 2008

New Study Links Carbon Management, Corporate Social Responsibility With Shareholder Value

87% percent of investor relations professionals say they believe companies can improve long-term shareholder value through better carbon management -- reducing emissions that affect the environment -- and that communications technologies can help companies achieve their overall corporate social responsibility goals.

Those figures are among the key findings of a new study conducted by Verizon Business and IR magazine which investigated the drivers -- governmental, regulatory, stakeholder or financial -- that are pushing environmental concerns to the top of the investor relations agenda, and identified how these concerns are affecting overall investor relations practices.

The report, which drew 150 responses from IR magazine’s global readership, found that investor relations professionals are increasingly interested in new communications tools that can help reduce a corporation’s energy usage and overall carbon footprint.

“This study shows the increasing weight that investor relations professionals are giving to climate-change issues,” said Roberta Mackintosh, executive director of global voice, unified communications and collaboration at Verizon Business.

“Verizon Business sees a tremendous opportunity and responsibility to help our customers work smarter. We can help them make better use of technologies to work more efficiently for their business and for the environment.

“We know that collaboration is a key driver of overall business performance; this study suggests that using collaborative technologies as part of an overall carbon management strategy also makes good business sense,” Mackintosh added.


Other findings by the study include:

•60% of the respondents say corporate social responsibility (CSR) concerns affected their decision to use technology to achieve business efficiencies – perhaps not surprising since fifty percent also say that senior management are the key drivers of carbon reduction and broader CSR initiatives.

•71% are already using audio/video and Web conferencing technologies to communicate with stakeholders, and indicate the use of technology to complement face-to-face meetings looks to become increasingly important as companies operate on a global stage.

•About 25% are already using technology to communicate with a closed interest group such as financial analysts.

•21% use conferencing to communicate with broad interest groups such as private shareholders.

• 45% say that shareholders are increasingly engaged in overall CSR policy, and forty-three percent already include carbon-reduction measures as a key part of overall CSR policies.