wfn.org | ELCA Committee Addresses Corporate Ethics, Economic Life

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ELCA NEWS SERVICE

September 2, 1999

ELCA COMMITTEE ADDRESSES CORPORATE ETHICS, ECONOMIC LIFE
99-217-FI

     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