In a landmark study, conducted across a wide sector of businesses in Sri Lanka, STING Consultant’s corporate accountability rating is to be published in the January 2009 issue of LMD.

The study was kicked off in mid 2008, by inviting the top 150 companies in Sri Lanka to voluntarily submit information on their corporate accountability practices. Based on this information and the analysis carried out by a team from STING Consultants, the top rated companies are to be listed. This corporate accountability rating is expected to be an annual feature, open to all businesses.

Ruchi Gunewardene, CEO of STING Consultants said “the fundamental issue that we want to challenge, is that CSR is not about donating sums of money for the under privileged and then crowing about it in the media. We also want to shift the mind set of business leaders from CSR as being an expense, to that which can actually help the bottom line through savings, avoiding damaging litigation, enhancing the corporate brand and to be a powerful tool to motivate employees. In our view, there are some companies that do this right, and some that simply don’t do it at all, with many doing a mediocre job of it. We intend to showcase a host of companies that are doing it right”.

According to Mr. Gunewardene there are many CSR awards that are happening which does not adequately asses the organizations true capability, causing confusion as to which companies are doing it well and which are not. The purpose of this study is to be able to share good practices and to benchmark those that are doing it really well, so that everyone could learn from them.

“By approaching corporate accountability in this manner, what we intend to do is, to create awareness, educate and then empower businesses to become the driving force of social change by impacting corporate and employee behaviour to become socially and environmentally responsible citizens, leading to making Sri Lanka a better place to live for all” concluded Mr. Gunewardene.