New: The Copenhagen Charter – a management guide to stakeholder reporting

Source: , 15 December 1999

"The Copenhagen Charter – a management guide to stakeholder reporting", has been published by the Danish offices of Ernst & Young, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the House of Mandag Morgen. The Copenhagen Charter was launched at the Building Stakeholder Relations conference on 16 November 1999.
Stakeholding is the most important issue that organisations face today. Simply because people are now seen as the key to organisational performance. Without a means of systematically managing their relationships and thereby their reputation, companies face the daily possibility of being hauled across the world media, in a way liable to damage many of their key intangible assets and intellectual capital.
Building Stakeholder Relations was the third international conference bringing together world leading managers, researchers, practitioners and NGOs in the field of stakeholder management and its methodologies; social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting (SEAAR).
The principles of social and ethical behaviour have been modernised for the new millennium, and leading organisations are creating substantial new opportunities to build competitive performance based on stakeholder inclusion. Sensitivity to the values of stakeholders is now more than ever a key determinant of organisational success. In the future, it is difficult to imagine a company creating real trust in its relationships, without a clearly described, audited and verified stakeholder dialogue process.
The conference had two key themes:
New management challenges posed by stakeholder dialogue and reporting. Successful stakeholder relationships require new management systems and internal controls aligned with governance, accounting and auditing functions, human resource management, quality management, international trading, communications and marketing. The conference featured open forums designed to locate the issues of stakeholderism within management disciplines.
New standards in SEAAR. On the conference there ws the launch of the Institute of Social and Ethical AccountAbility (ISEA) international standards to provide organisations with a tool by which to develop high-quality systems and procedures for stakeholder dialogue and reporting.
Building Stakeholder Relations is organised by the Institute of Social and Ethical AccountAbility, The Copenhagen Centre, Novo Nordisk A/S, Copenhagen Business School and The House of Mandag Morgen.

Download the full charter text