ELCA Committee Addresses Corporate Ethics, Economic Life

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Possible shareholder resolutions on sweatshops and on banks reinvesting in their own communities engaged an advisory committee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) meeting here Aug. 28. The ELCA Advisory Committee on Corporate Social Responsibility also discussed a new report on global corporate ethics and how to implement the church's new social statement on economic life.
Through the advisory committee, the ELCA Division for Church in Society (DCS) counsels various institutions of the church that invest in stocks. The committee screened seven shareholder resolutions, coordinated through the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), New York, and decided to recommend six to the DCS board and ELCA Church Council for consideration.
The committee saw four shareholder resolutions that it had recommended in previous years and three new resolutions. It decided not to forward a new resolution on ethical criteria of a specific defense contractor.
The group approved "in principle" a resolution on Equal Credit Opportunity -- Community Reinvestment and asked Trudy A. Brubaker, ELCA director for corporate social responsibility, to see that its wording is clarified.
The resolution urges financial institutions to "follow through on federal legislation which requires banks to reinvest in their own communities and mandates that they do not discriminate in who receives those loans and community-reinvestment monies," said Brubaker.
The other new resolution on Foreign Supplier Labor Standards asks "primarily those corporations which are doing business in foreign countries ... to adopt the same ethical standards they use in this country," said Brubaker. "This gets at the heart of the sweatshop issues that we'd like to talk about."
The committee advanced four returning resolutions:
+ Board Inclusiveness Review -- asks for a report on efforts to encourage diversified representation on the company's board and requests a greater effort to locate qualified women and people of color as nominees for the board;
+ Endorsement of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) Principles -- asks the company to endorse specific principles of corporate commitment and accountability for environmental performance;
+ Equal Employment Diversity Report -- asks for a report summarizing the company's affirmative action policies and charting employment practices regarding women and people of color; and
+ Proposal for a Global Set of Corporate Standards -- asks for a review of the company's code for its international operations and a summary of that review in a report to the shareholders.
Generally, resolutions are filed with corporations before the end of each year in preparation for stockholder meetings to be held the following spring. Many resolutions are withdrawn before reaching the stockholder meetings because they prompt significant dialogues between the filer and the corporation's management.
Lutheran institutions are not necessarily the primary filers of the stockholder resolutions. The division works with its counterparts in about 275 other religious organizations through the ICCR.

CONFERENCE BOARD REPORT
"Global Corporate Ethics Practices: A Developing Consensus," a new research report from The Conference Board was a centerpiece of the committee meeting. The Conference Board is a not-for-profit, non-advocacy research organization with a membership of more than 2,900 companies and other organizations in 65 countries.
Dr. Robert C. Holland, a senior fellow at The Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, presented the report to the ELCA advisory committee with several recommendations of how the church could use the findings.
"The report identifies an emerging consensus in some core, global, ethical principles for business in the leading companies around the world," said Holland. "A lot of people are going to find the report a very helpful reference point now and in the future."
One of Holland's recommendations was to start asking companies for copies of their codes of conduct. He said those codes could be compared to the Conference Board report.
Holland's other recommendations included that ICCR study the report in consultation with its author, Ronald E. Berenbeim. He also asked that the ELCA publicize the report.
Major corporations, including AT&T, Dow Chemical and Procter & Gamble, use the Conference Board's information for "bench-marking," said Holland. The Conference Board is good at collecting and disseminating information about business practices, he said. The board is based in New York, Brussels and Ottawa.
On the other hand, Holland's colleagues at Wharton are good at analyzing such information and producing recommendations, he said. Both organizations shared an interest in business ethics, while their expertises complemented each other, he said.
Wharton and the Conference Board were beginning to notice a rapid rise in attention to ethical codes of conduct among the world's major companies, said Holland. As a result, they established a working group -- corporate executives, academics, government officials and activists promoting ethics -- to develop the "Global Corporate Ethics Practices" report on emerging consensus, he said.
Holland received his doctorate in finance from Wharton and worked 25 years with the Federal Reserve System, retiring as a governor on the Federal Reserve Board. The next 15 years he managed the Committee for Economic Development, an academic business think tank that studied national economic issues.
Holland is a member of the ELCA advisory committee and St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Washington, D.C. He co-directs research and outreach in the field of business ethics and diversity management for the SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management at Wharton.

ELCA ECONOMIC LIFE STATEMENT
The ELCA Churchwide Assembly adopted "Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All," a social statement on economic life, Aug. 21 in Denver.
"This social statement really gives direction for corporate social responsibility in many ways," said Brubaker. "I am looking forward to implementing that social statement in my daily work."
The Rev. Charles S. Miller, executive director of the ELCA Division for Church in Society, told the advisory committee that a consultation, involving the corporate social responsibility and studies staff of DCS, could be organized for sometime during the first half of 2000.
Brubaker said the consultation could lead to a public statement from the ELCA on corporate social responsibility.
The next meeting of the ELCA Advisory Committee on Corporate Social Responsibility will be here Jan. 15.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://listserv.elca.org/archives/elcanews.html