corporate responsibility index partners:

The Index is part of the National Responsible Business Practice Project which is funded by the Australian Federal Government, through Treasury to enable St James Ethics Centre to engage Australian businesses in identifying and adopting more responsible business practices.

The Corporate Responsibility Index is developed and maintained by Business in the Community in the UK. The Index is a project of St James Ethics Centre, supported by our media partners are The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and external validators PricewaterhouseCoopers. Project catalyst: Pilotlight Australia.

why the index partners have become involved in the corporate responsibility index

St James Ethics Centre

St James Ethics Centre has long believed in the importance of finding ways to encourage Australian business to adopt best practice in the field of corporate responsibility. The Centre is keen to support initiatives that will advance this agenda in a manner that can be trusted by the community as a whole. Given the Centre's role and history, we believe that we can add real value by assuring the integrity of the Corporate Responsibility Index in Australia and New Zealand.

Since it was established in 1989, the Centre has worked extensively with business, the professions, community groups, governments and individuals to encourage and assist them to include the ethical dimension in their daily lives and help to create a better world.

This Index will extend the kind of work that we do by providing business leaders with an opportunity to engage with some of the most pressing and important issues of our times. It will create a credible benchmark for those companies who are serious about incorporating Corporate Responsibility into all areas of their activity.

Dr Simon Longstaff, Executive Director, St James Ethics Centre

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age will publish the results of the survey as a means of stimulating discussion and debate about corporate best practice. Case studies of successful companies will be highlighted as a guide to how companies are adopting responsible corporate practices as part of a global trend to measure business performance across a series of broad parameters.

The strength of the Index is that it has been developed by business and community groups in partnership and focuses on issues relevant to these groups. The Index has achieved a high level of credibility in the UK. Over time it is expected the Australian Index will evolve in response to local corporate and public discussion about what best constitutes corporate responsibility.

Tom Burton, former Executive Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald

PricewaterhouseCoopers

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is delighted to have the opportunity to work with St James Ethics Centre to provide validation services for the Australian and New Zealand Index for 2008 and 2009. These services will be provided by specialists from our Sustainability & Climate Change Australia and New Zealand practices.

PwC understands the value of the CRI in helping companies to enhance their capacity to develop, embed, measure and communicate corporate responsibility. We have worked with companies and key information users on an industry-specific basis for more than 10 years to improve responsible business practices and reporting. We believe there is significant value for participating companies in receiving third party feedback on their CRI responses and to participating in benchmarking. PwC is committed to build corporate responsibility into everything we do and it is important to us that we are transparent in our own journey. This is highlighted by our commitment to participate in the CRI ourselves.

Through our involvement with St James Ethics Centre we look forward to increasing the awareness of the importance of responsible business practices within the business community and the role of the CRI.

Liza Maimone, Partner, Sustainability & Climate Change Services Leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia

Corporate Responsibility Index validation

The CRI as a self assessment survey incorporates a rigorous validation process. Each company submission is required to be accompanied by supporting evidence and signed off by the Chief Executive or relevant Board member. External Validators assess each submission on a sample basis to check responses are supported with appropriate evidence and that questions have been interpreted consistently by participants.

Ernst & Young provided validation services to the Australian and New Zealand Corporate Responsibility Index (CRI) for the first five years of the project through its dedicated Climate Change and Sustainability Services team. Ernst & Young provided pro-bono validation for the first three years of the Index and a validation fee was introduced in 2006 to contribute to the costs of external validation.

In 2007 St James Ethics Centre was granted Federal Government funding, through Treasury, to expand Responsible Business Practice (RBP) in Australia and refine the tools available to all levels of business. Given the fee for validation introduced in 2006 and the federal government funding, St James Ethics Centre tendered the Validation Services for the 2008 and 2009 CRI in Australia and New Zealand in August 2008.

We welcome PricewaterhouseCoopers as the new external validators of the 2008 and 2009 CRI.  St James Ethics Centre looks forward to working with PwC’s Australia and New Zealand Sustainability & Climate Change Practices on the Australia and New Zealand Index.

We would like to acknowledge and thank Ernst & Young for their support and the professional expertise they have brought to the validation process over the years and we look forward to our on-going relationship with them. Ernst & Young will continue working with the Centre developing SME initiatives of the RBP project.

Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young provided validation services to the Australian Corporate Responsibility Index (CRI) for the first five years through its dedicated Climate Change and Sustainability Services team.

Ernst & Young was pleased to actively support the establishment of the CRI in Australia by working with the St James Ethics Centre to guide an increasing number of Australian organisations on their corporate responsibility journey. We believe the CRI is a valuable tool for Australian companies to measure the implementation of corporate responsibility within their organisations and benchmark themselves against Australian and global peers. The CRI has continued to evolve in line with emerging corporate responsibility practices and we believe it will continue to remain relevant into the future. Through increasing involvement, we believe that we can expect a more sustainable and socially responsible future.

John Davies, Partner, Climate Change and Sustainability Services, Ernst & Young

project catalyst

site map > copyright & legal > about the site

The Corporate Responsibility Index is funded by the Australian Federal Government. The Index, developed and maintained by Business in the Community in the UK, is a project of St James Ethics Centre supported by Ernst & Young. Our media partners are The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Project catalyst: Pilotlight Australia.