Managing corporate citizenship: a new tool for companies

In today's global economic downturn, identifying a company's strengths and weaknesses for better aligning resources and strategies, is becoming more important than ever. Organizations that look at corporate citizenship as a critical part of business for providing new market opportunities, reducing risk, or improving reputation, are making greater efforts to assess their strengths and weaknesses to better prioritize resources and actions. Having the appropriate tools with which to do so is vital. This paper discusses the challenges of corporate citizenship management and outlines key findings and lessons learned from piloting a new assessment tool for companies. It presents two examples of how companies have used the tool to advance their corporate citizenship efforts. Finally, it summarizes key findings about ‘gaps’ and ‘strengths’ in corporate citizenship management today and provides recommendations for further research.