PRINCIPLES FOR RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS
Seven core principles underlie the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism approach to responsible business practices. They are rooted in the recognition that neither the law nor market forces are sufficient to ensure positive and productive – in every sense of the term – conduct.
Principle 1: Respect stakeholders beyond shareholders. A responsible business has responsibilities beyond its investors and managers.
Principle 2: Contribute to economic and social development.
Principle 3: Build trust by going beyond the letter of the law.
Principle 4: Respect rules and conventions.
Principle 5: Support responsible globalization.
Principle 6: Respect the environment.
Principle 7: Avoid illicit activities.
STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT GUIDELINES
These guidelines supplement the Principles for Business. They provide specific standards for engaging with key shareholder constituencies. These constituencies are a key to business success and sustainability. In turn, they are the principle beneficiaries of ethical business practices.
Key Stakeholders
Customers: A responsible business treats its customers with respect and dignity.
Employees: This key body of stakeholders owes its well-being to the way employers treat them. Living wages, respect for health and safety and fair wages are all key to a company’s long-term success.
Shareholders: A responsible business acts with care and loyalty toward its shareholders.
Suppliers: A responsible business must treat its suppliers with respect and truthfulness. This includes fairness and directness in pricing, licensing and payment.
Competitors: Fair competition is a key to increasing the wealth and stability of an economy. Businesses must promote socially and environmentally responsible behavior with all parties, while avoiding anti-competitive arrangements, respecting tangible and property rights and refusing to acquire commercial information through unethical means.
Communities: Businesses affect public policy and human rights in which they operate. They must do what they can to promote human rights, work with initiatives designed to promote community improvement and sustainable development and support social diversity.
PRINCIPLES FOR GOVERNMENT
Bad government is a shortcut to poverty, poor distribution of wealth and chronic civic unrest. We believe better government will attract increased private investment and create more wealth for more people.
Principle 1: Public Power is held in trust for the community. The state is the servant and is subordinate to society.Governments that abuse their power lose their authority and may be removed from office.
Principle 2: Discourse should guide the application of public power. However allocated, public power must abide by the communities of rules, written and/or understood, that guide civil discussion and open decision-making.
Principle 3: Public power constitutes a civic order for the safety and common good of society.
Principle 4: The state shall protect and restore all principles and institutions that sustain the moral integrity and civic identity of citizens. Corruption may not be condoned.
Principle 5: Security of persons, individual liberty and ownership of property are the foundation of individual justice.
Principle 6: Justice shall be provided impartially.
Principle 7: General welfare contemplates improving the well-being of individual citizens. Transparency of government ensures accountability. The more open, the more honest. The more honest, the more legitimate the governing process is viewed by citizens.
Principle 8: Global cooperation advances national welfare. Competition is a vital ingredient – but only one – among countries, as it is among companies.
PRINCIPLES FOR GOOD CITIZENSHIP
Human beings can only thrive in community. But that community must be healthy, balanced, fair and equitable with clear rules acknowledged and observed by all members, no matter what their social status. We need the values and courage to live for ourselves and for others in the right balance. True justice is the expression of honest citizenship living in community.
This difficult balancing act is entirely up to our own willingness to learn and live by those principles, even when we personally are not the immediate victor. If we make room for a victory by anyone, then we make room for a victory by all.
Principle 1: I will learn.
Principle 2: I will reflect and deliberate on what I‘ve learned.
Principle 3: I will tell the truth about what I know.
Principle 4: I will not try to hide my ideas and feelings.
Principle 5: I will use my powers wisely.
Principle 6: I will try hard to make the most of my life.
Principle 7: I will not be afraid.
Principle 8: I will care about others.
Principle 9: I will find happiness not in money but in doing what is right.
Principle 10: I will be thankful for all the good I have experienced and brave in times of difficulty and frustration.
PRINCIPLES FOR OWNERSHIP OF WEALTH
These days, wealth mostly comes from returns on capital. For capital to behave in an enlightened and sustainable fashion requires that the ownership of wealth must consciously entail a commitment to stewardship.
Principle 1: Wealth should be used to enhance other forms of capital – financial, physical, human, reputational and social.
Principle 2: The desire for self-satisfaction and pride of accomplishment must be balanced against a society’s needs to accumulate capital of all kinds.
Principle 3: Wealth must support the creation of social capital.
Principle 4: Wealth should be invested in institutions that enhance social capital, whether that is education or training or other approaches to advance the individual capacity to contribute to the whole.
Principle 5: Private wealth must supplement public expenditures for creating a social safety net.
Principle 6: No one is entitled to use or enjoy wealth procured by fraud, corruption, theft or through other abuses of power.
PRINCIPLES FOR NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS
Business and government play a leading role in promoting a better world. In recent decades, many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) have joined this effort. Some operate on national or transnational terms. Others are only known in their own community. All play a role in ensuring that the rules of moral capitalism and government are enforced.
Principle 1: Integrity. An NGO has to act in accordance with its own code of aspirations.
Principle 2: Public Benefit. An NGO’s actions must reflect the values of the people who support the organization, as well as the social, political, economic and environment goals those people support.
Principle 3: Transparency. NGOs should be completely transparent about their mission, objectives, values, principles, governance, actions and means of pursuing its objectives.
Principle 4: Participatory governance. An NGO communicates with the public and stakeholders about its care of transparency, accountability and loyalty in decision-making and fund management.
Principle 5: Independence. An NGO will disclose all ties – financial, political or otherwise – that may affect its impact, intentions and activities.
Principle 6: Respect for the law. This holds both for national and international law.
Principle 7: Care. When engaged in advocacy, planning its actions and executing its policies, an NGO will present truthful information and act with enlightened care for those its policies might affect.
Principle 8: Accountability. An NGO will produce, on a regular basis, a public, web-based report on all the activities it has taken to realize its mission and objectives.