The European Centre for Innovative Enterprises of Valencia, Spain has promoted, through the Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness, the first self-diagnostic test for companies and entrepreneurs to quantitatively assess the social and environmental impact of their business. The methodology is based on the model of the Economy of the Common Good. This test has been developed by the Chair of Economics of the Common Good of the University of Valencia, specifically by Joan Ramon Sanchis Palacio, Vanessa Campos Climent and Ana Teresa Ejarque Catalá.
It is an agile and simple tool that allows the user to know after 20 questions the point at which their entity is in line with corporate sustainability. According to Professor Joan Ramon Sanchis, it “is a very important step on the road to corporate sustainability. This tool can help Valencian SMEs to know approximately what their contribution to social and environmental impacts is and thus initiate a process of implementation of management models based on sustainability”. In her opinion, “it can be part of the measures that should be taken to initiate the change of productive model, necessary to reduce the temporary nature of employment and the excessive dependence of the Valencian economy on very unsustainable sectors”. For her part, the general director of Ivace, Julia Company, pointed out that “thanks to this information, companies and entrepreneurs can identify opportunities for improvement and gain in competitiveness, focusing their resources on the implementation of sustainable criteria required today to meet the new demands and market trends”.
The test focuses on the analysis of the company’s main stakeholders: suppliers and their relationships in the supply chain; owners and financiers of the organization; employees; customers and other companies; and the social environment. For each of these, human dignity; solidarity and social justice; environmental sustainability; and transparency and partnership are evaluated. With this information, the test measures the company’s position in the Dyllick and Muff Matrix, which proposes the existence of four different levels of Corporate Sustainability. In the lowest position are non-sustainable companies or businesses as usual, which propose economic objectives focused on creating value exclusively for their owners and managers, from an organizational perspective from the inside out.
At the fourth level are Sustainability 3.0 companies, with objectives for the economic, social and environmental dimensions, focused on creating value for all stakeholders from the vision of the common good, with an organized perspective from the outside in.
In addition to allowing organizations to move towards corporate sustainability and to know their strengths and weaknesses in this area, this test can also be the next step to the sustainability report of the company and the beginning of the path towards the Register of Socially Responsible Entities of the Valencian Community. This self-diagnosis is part of a series of nine self-diagnosis tests that can be found in addition to other resources. In total there are about 600 free resources available, created exclusively for entrepreneurs, startups and SMEs, which have 25 million visits and more than one million downloads.
This is an initiative of the European Business and Innovation Centers of the Valencian Community, promoted and financed by the Generalitat, through the Instituto Valenciano de Competitividad Empresarial (IVACE), within its policy of supporting innovative entrepreneurship.
Full article (in Spanish) here.
