The gap between CSR reports and performance

Greenwashing is everywhere, if we are to believe Terrachoice. Their Sins of Greenwashing 2010 report tells us how the number of greenwashing incidents continues to grow, mostly with companies making claims on how they have dealt with some of the less significant impacts, while omiting all sorts of other issues. Companies get more penalised for sticking their head above the parapet and actually dealing with some of their impacts, than for burying it in the sand and ignoring the whole agenda. But how does a company choose when and how to report, so they can be taken seriously for their efforts? What is enough to feel confident about public disclosure?

I have been analysing the data from 10 international leisure hotel chains further- our research was conducted for 9 national consumer associations and published in March 2011, and presented at ITB Berlin. With my academic hat on, I am now delving more deeply into the data. There’s some really interesting lessons to be learned, which I shall present to ICRT alumni in London on Wed 13th July (alumni know where and when we meet monthly). Here’s a sneak preview:

This table tells you about the quality of these hotels’ CSR reports- 39 indicators provided evidence for 13 criteria in six different themes. The large international chains have more comprehensive policies.

	COR PORATE	LABOUR	SOCIO ECO	ENV	CUS TOMER	TRANS PARENCY	Total (0-100)	Ranking
ACCOR	72	79	73	100	95	94	86	1º
BARCELÓ	43	50	45	70	62	82	58	7º
CARLSON	56	79	76	74	82	65	74	5º
HILTON	53	35	46	82	35	68	54	8º
IBEROSTAR	21	3	47	50	50	61	38	9º
INTERCONTI	59	82	77	91	66	96	80	3º
MARRIOTT	50	65	83	98	81	96	81	2º
RIU	0	0	18	70	29	12	27	10º
SOL MELIÁ	61	68	83	94	59	100	79	4º
STARWOOD	54	79	50	95	56	78	71	6º
Average	46.9	54	59.8	82.4	61.5	75.2	64.8

This second table tell us the percentage of points that hotel groups lost when we visited their actual hotels, in Thailand, Mexico and the Med, to check if policies were implemented. Two of the hotel groups with the initial best policies had the greatest policy-performance gap, and those that lost least points were the groups that had low initial scores. RIU lost most points because they denied access to all their hotels. Accor however had a high policy-performance consistency. 

	COR PORATE	LABOUR	SOCIO ECO	ENV	CUS TOMER	TRANS PARENCY	Total (0-100)	Ranking
ACCOR	2	0	10	8	21	0	7	3º
BARCELÓ	2	0	1	15	16	0	5	1º
CARLSON	6	2	8	9	28	0	11	5º
HILTON	5	8	7	29	13	0	11	6º
IBEROSTAR	1	0	11	12	10	0	5	2º
INTERCONTI	7	0	11	34	27	0	15	8º
MARRIOTT	3	0	8	35	30	0	15	9º
RIU	0	0	4	69	19	0	21	10º
SOL MELIÁ	3	1	21	23	13	0	12	7º
STARWOOD	5	0	4	14	19	0	9	4º
Average per section	3.4	1.1	8.5	24.8	19.6	0	11.1

This explains our final table, the basis of the publications in the consumer association magazines: Seen as a greenwashing question, Marriott and Intercontinental would have a problem- they could be criticised for not doing what their policies say. But even when that’s taken into account, their overall performance was much higher than that of say Barcelo and Iberostar, who promised little and consistently delivered accordingly. CSR is a moving target, not only in time but across geographies and management styles.

	CORPO RATE	LABOUR	SOCIO ECO	ENV	CUS TOMER	TRANS PARENCY	Total (0-100)	Ranking
ACCOR	70	79	63	92	74	94	79	1º
BARCELÓ	41	50	44	55	46	82	53	7º
CARLSON	50	77	68	65	54	65	63	5º
HILTON	48	27	39	53	22	68	43	8º
IBEROSTAR	20	3	36	38	40	61	33	9º
INTERCONTI	52	82	66	57	39	96	65	4º
MARRIOTT	47	65	75	63	51	96	66	3º
RIU	0	0	14	1	10	12	6	10º
SOL MELIÁ	58	67	62	71	46	100	67	2º
STARWOOD	49	79	46	81	37	78	62	6º
Average per section	44	53	51	58	42	75	54

My question to you is then: is it better to be ambitious in your CSR policy, and accept a partial implementation, or should we be conservative?

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