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Communication with Stakeholders
The active dialogue between the
research team, the company and all company stakeholders plays
a pivotal role in the whole evaluation process.
The co-operation of the company to the analysis process is
a basic condition for inclusion in the investment register.
After all, most of the information must come from the company
itself and from those who are directly involved in it. This
does not mean that ETHIBEL relies on the attractive brochures
and ambitious declarations that supposedly provide some companies
with a green or socially responsible aura. A researcher of
the ETHIBEL model does not stop at surveys with standard list
of questions. He or she will always go further to contact
the company directly and make an appointment with those responsible
for various policy fields.
Moreover, any information is checked based on contacts with
other stakeholders. This term ‘stakeholders’ refers
to "social shareholders" who are directly or indirectly
involved in the company - employees, trade unions, members
of environmental and third world movements, etc.
The research team visits, whenever feasible, the companies
on the spot. For the contact with companies and branches abroad,
ETHIBEL relies on a global network of partners
and consultancies that work along the same lines as ETHIBEL
for the information exchange.
The dialogue continues even when the evaluation is completed.
The companies are informed by ETHIBEL about the result of
the cooperative research with the message that ETHIBEL will
continue to watch them closely. Even if a company is not approved
of by the register committee, ETHIBEL's investigation can
be useful for that company. It provides them with a detailed,
independent and expert view of their strength and weakness.
Companies that are motivated to improve their policy can obtain
useful information from the ETHIBEL investigation.
In this way ETHIBEL's research model ensures one of the most
important goals of ethical or sustainable investment - the
encouragement to take further steps in the direction of sustainable
entrepreneurship.
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