We confirmed the fallacy that we suspected in an article on 5 April on the GRI Awards for best sustainability report. In that article (GRI Awards for best sustainability report: Fallacy?, Www.cumpetere.blogspot.com), based on the award finalists were wondering if it would be a fallacy, with question mark. Now with the end results are confirmed, GRI Awards are a fallacy!, With exclamation points.
six awards have been handed over and the winners are ... ... ... ... ...! SURPRISE !!!!..... six Brazilian companies. Three awards to the same company, Banco do Brasil and the other three to Vale, the company Natura Cosmetics and Banco Bradesco. Already
May 27, 2008 (Does that seem GRI Awards and the Eurovision?, Www.cumpetere, blogspot.com) warned of the difficulties in issuing awards for sustainability reporting based on the popular vote and we showed almost impossible to have a reader to read, much less compare various reports. I compared it to the Eurovision Awards, where citizens of a country (who can not vote for the song from your country) voted for the neighboring countries which have an affinity. The case of the GRI is worse, the supposed readers vote for their country reports. This is a competition where the audience like it, not competitors. Hopefully
World Cup is decided on the field and not in the stands! If not, South Africa will win.
In the first edition of the awards we showed the low probability that the winners were mostly from Brazil and India and none of the traditionally strong countries in sustainability reporting. In Brazil the first edition was the third country in the world votes, but the second in voting. Almost 80% of the votes of the Brazilian went to their country reports. For this edition we have the numbers of those who vote for their country, but one suspects that exceeded these ratios.
What we do is available at GRI's website is the geographical distribution of votes, but not voters. For example, for the award of Engagement ("Engagement") was 12,748 votes of which 82% were for reports from Brazil (of undisclosed origin.) India gained 10%, the rest of 8% for the other 11 countries. For the award of Investors had 1,991 votes, of which 84% went to Brazil.
Each elector voted for an average of 8 reports (which reading!)
appearances now or stay: All winners are from the same country. The country where the prizes are more promotion, the country's main sponsor of the prize (although we must congratulate and ethically decided to leave his report out of competition).
with runners already were showing a strange country allocation, if voters participate in the competition in many countries in an unbiased manner. We reproduce the table of finalists compared to the number of reports submitted to the GRI.
It turns out that the four winners are from the same country. Brazil has 66 reports submitted to the GRI of 1346.del 2008-2009. So it has 5% of the reports. If the selection was unbiased and would have voters from all countries in proportion to the number reports, the probability, a priori, that Brazil won a is 5% but that's won four of 0.0006%. Imagine a die with 20 sides. Pulled four times and four times out the same side. Possible but unlikely. Not to mention that win all 7 prizes.
Less likely is that the U.S. and Spain, with a ratio of GRI reports exceeding 10%, did not win any.
is true that the selection is not random. Should not be. By comparison only to illustrate the other extreme, that the selection is highly biased.
This is not to say that the reports are not the best, or that Brazil is a country of excellence in reporting. Are all known and very reputable companies, some models of sustainability. It is quite possible that their reports are the best. What we mean is that the methodology is completely inappropriate to select "better reporting." Already in the previous ballot and the finalists of this had been that the reports are selected with few votes and nationals of these countries. In a country where sustainability is so advanced, it is so nationalistic and its inhabitants are proud of their accomplishments as Brazil international is expected to vote for their businesses. Nothing bad. The methodology is inappropriate.
Does this matter? Overall, it a single award. It does count and plenty for four reasons: Because disrepute to sustainability (which is in doubt about whether facelift and this does not help) discredits the winners (which won a suspect), discredits sustainability reports (which are not taken seriously by many voters) and discredits the GRI.
the GRI Society needs a credible producing GRI guidelines to guide for responsible practices report, which will give its adoption.
GRI
But unfortunately falls victim to one of the worst practices of sustainability: the search for fame leads to irresponsible actions like this.
Please sir @ s of the GRI: cancel these awards and get on to produce and promote the use of guidelines. And if they give prizes, do it with a panel of expert, impartial, who have studied the reports.
PS In the interest of transparency I must report that I have no data on the origin of the votes in this issue, just where they went. It would be highly desirable that the GRI, following the transparency advocates also report where they came from the votes they received all 103 finalists.
0 comments:
Post a Comment