The Financial Times reports today that the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), which represents institutional investors with funds under management of $9,500bn, has written to Jeremy Heywood, the Downing Street permanent secretary, seeking confirmation that there will be “no dilution of the spirit of the UK law as passed by Parliament.”

It seems that the more time that passes, the more conflicting submissions are made concerning the stipulations of the Act. Business has been claiming that some of its provisions will be too onerous and lead to a competitive disadvantage for UK businesses seeking to operate within emerging markets, meanwhile the investor community is placing emphasis on creating a “clear and enforceable anti-bribery law in the UK” and the minimising of risk.

The FT piece today highlights that there are conflicting issues at play here. Businesses are concerned about how they are going to implement the Act’s provisions when it is not yet known how some of the terms will be defined. Investors are concerned that the Act may be watered-down and won’t stand up to scrutiny when compared to the approach to bribery and corruption taken by other developed countries. I think the only thing that remains clear is that unless the guidance due to be published by the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, addresses all these issues, we may end up in a situation where businesses won’t know how to comply and investors won’t know what to expect.

It has often been said that in these turbulent economic times, one of the safest investments is gold because its price has increased at a staggering rate, from £200 per ounce in 1999 to over £875 in 2010. However, the International Labour Organisation, which seeks to promote social justice and human rights, has long expressed concern about the working conditions faced by the estimated 15 million people working in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector that provides much of the gold that goes into the £86 billion global market for gold jewellery.

In contrast to conflict diamonds, an issue which has received received public attention in recent years through the introduction of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme in 2003 and the 2006 film ‘Blood Diamond’, supply chain issues in relation to the production of gold jewellery do not seem to attract as much attention. This leaves those involved in the production and retailing of gold jewellery in a situation which presents them with significant opportunities, as well as a need to demonstrate that they are managing risk.

The supply chain of a piece of gold jewellery is harder to investigate than it is, say, for tea or coffee, where information concerning where it has been sourced from can often be found printed on the packaging.  Jewellery companies who are signed up to the Fairmined and Fairtrade initiative can begin to demonstrate that they have identified some of the reputational and business risks involved in dealing with gold. There may also be an opportunity for companies who are talking about these issues to establish a peer group advantage in this area, and perhaps bring issues like this to the attention of a wider stakeholder audience.

It seems that this was an accurate prediction, as it emerged yesterday that the government has put implementation of the Act on hold while it re-examines the relevant guidance to business. The Ministry of Justice has not revealed when the new guidance will be published, but what is known is that three months must pass once the guidance has been published before the Act goes on the statute book.

Submissions from parts of the business community have expressed concern that some of the Act’s stipulations may be too onerrous, and others have gone further and suggested that some of the provisions within it may limit the UK’s ability to do business in some emerging markets.

At CO3, our worry has been that compliance with the Bribery Act in its current incarnation requires a significant level of preparation for UK companies. A large amount of time and resources has already no doubt been expended by some companies, who will now need to revisit everything they’ve put in place thus far once the new guidelines are produced. If the Act is to be amended at the eleventh hour, three months doesn’t seem like a particularly long period for companies to ensure they can meet their new legal obligations.

Today, the issue of gender diversity on the boards of UK firms is again discussed on pages 68 and 69 of The Times. Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland, has urged UK business to up its game in this area, or risk the European Commission enforcing quotas on UK-listed companies.

Towards the end of the piece, Ruth Grant, a partner at law firm Hogan Lovells, raised an interesting point regarding the difficulties she would face in obtaining a non executive directorship, not because she’s a woman, but because she’s a lawyer. She cites a perception that lawyers “are too risk-averse…too bogged down in detail.”  This would certainly go some way to explaining why the traditional view of boards being made up from fifty-something, white men, with a financial background, persists, and begs the wider question: shouldn’t we be talking about what kind of people are making up the boards of UK-listed companies, rather than focusing on what gender they are?

The idea of European Commission quotas seems to me to present a risk. If it becomes compulsory to fill a certain number seats in the boardroom with female members, is there not a danger that other under-represented groups may be further excluded?

Once again, it seems a shame that the article hasn’t really explored the subtext: that achieving real diversity involves thinking about it as more than simply a gender issue. In order to be effective at leading a company, a board needs to able to offer a range of experience, personalities, and individual strengths. This might involve thinking a little bit outside of the navy blue, besuited, middle aged, male box.

We would certainly agree with the assertion that philanthropy, such as making corporate donations to charity and volunteering schemes, is not central to business strategy. However, the piece seems to have confused the concepts of philanthropy and CSR, believing them to be the same. Philanthropy is “a good thing”, but it isn’t CSR. The piece goes on to discuss the adoption of a concept of “corporate social innovation” to describe where businesses are making a social impact, and describes this as “going beyond CSR”.

Unfortunately, we thought that this missed the point somewhat. The central tenet of CSR is about evaluating how your activities impact on not only society at large, but on the environment, and health and safety matters, for all stakeholders, and to ensure that these impacts are being properly managed and communicated in order to maximise opportunity and minimise risk. Quite aside from this, in a world already clouded with a lot of (often confusing) terminology (see also: greenwashing, sustainability, citizenship, ethics) we thought it was rather unhelpful to attempt to put another label on CSR. So many businesses struggle to fully grasp this important area anyway. Why make it more difficult?

We at CO3 have long thought that the obvious unpopularity of the banking industry with consumers represented an opportunity for someone to shake up the system. Metro’s approach, based on a customer-focused, more retail-like experience, might be just what it takes to breathe new life into an industry which is largely felt to be untrustworthy and ambivalent towards its stakeholders.

The bank will be open seven days a week, with the exception of four public holidays a year, and its branches will be open until 8pm on weekdays. Bearing in mind that supermarkets and other retailers have been doing this for years, it is perhaps surprising that no-one has thought of applying this model to banking in the UK before. One of the co-founders of Metro Bank, Vernon Hill, has a strong track record in this area in the United States, notably with Commerce Bancorp, where he achieved enormous success by applying the business model he had used when running Burger King franchises.

Of course, there is no “magic wand” for restoring peoples’ faith in the banking system, and any revolution is likely to be “slow-burn” rather than “quick-fix”. There will always be cynics who will argue that various aspects of Metro Bank’s approach (such as providing water bowls for customers with dogs) are gimmicky. But it is not very long ago that people were queuing up to take their money out of banks. At Metro yesterday, long queues of potential customers formed to open their accounts to put their money in to a bank with no track record and a fledgling reputation. It will be interesting to see how Metro fares and whether the more established players follow their consumer friendly lead.

Some might speculate that it is relatively easy for the boss of a FTSE100 company with a market capitalisation of a shade over £25billion, with stock currently trading at around £20 per share, to make a statement that perhaps slightly dismisses the importance of shareholder value. But actually there is an even wider argument here which Paul Polman hinted at but didn’t quite explore in the FT article: that by demonstrating that an integral part of your business model is consideration of the interests of a wide range of stakeholders, it de facto indicates a robust approach towards the generation of long-term shareholder value.

This is where the CSR argument comes in. A company which adopts a comprehensive responsible approach towards a broad range of stakeholders (including customers, staff, local communities, governments, NGOs, and shareholders) and issues (environmental, social, health and safety, and so on) is more likely to be see to be “in it for the long haul”. People (and by people I mean consumers, staff and, yes, even shareholders) are more likely to value brands and companies more highly if they are clearly showing that they are aware of their impacts, risks and opportunities on a wide variety of levels, and that the business is being run accordingly.

Many territories have legislation encouraging recycling of e-waste, but many others find themselves the recipients of illegal imports of e-waste, which poses a serious threat to the environment and to people’s health due to the toxic material which such waste often contains. This rather begs the question: what is the point of taking steps regarding material use, packaging, and transportation, if companies are not paying heed to what happens at the end of a product’s life cycle?

A visit to the Dell website revealed that they operate both a recycling and donation scheme for Dell products, and the same for non-Dell products when a new Dell machine is being purchased. However, in order to find out about this, I had to click on a very small link at the foot of the page entitled “All About Dell” (which doesn’t really give a clue that I might find information about recycling there), and then navigate through a further six pages to get the information I needed. Apple fared slightly better, as it only took three clicks for me to discover that I can get free recycling on all Macs, iPods and iPhones, but again, I had to click on a very small “Environment” link at the foot of the main home page.

It strikes me that companies are missing a vital opportunity here to demonstrate to their largest stakeholder group – their customers – that they not only acknowledge their impact in this area but are also taking proactive steps to address it. To this end, a reasonably visible link on the home page which suggests that recycling of unwanted products is possible, and even free, might be a good start.

Of the eight Companies Act requirements reviewed, one pertains specifically to CSR and one relates to non-financial KPIs, which includes environmental and employee matters. The review focused on content, communication, and clutter, scoring performance on a five point scale.

Rather unsurprisingly, the review found that in both of these areas, most companies still haven’t quite grasped how to communicate this aspect of their activities in a robust and easy to understand manner. Since our inception, we have always maintained that quality reporting is about providing the relevant information for the right audience in a concise and imaginative way.  Therefore, it was difficult not to launch into spontaneous applause when we read that the ASB found that the CSR information presented in annual reports largely contained unnecessary padding, and that a significant proportion of companies were failing to provide linkage between the CSR information provided and the business reasons for doing it in the first place. Within the ASB report, only 20% of the companies sampled provided a convincing explanation of why CSR is important to their business. If a robust business argument cannot be presented as to why information should be included, then its place is not in the annual report.

There are other mechanisms for communicating a company’s CSR credentials, including a standalone CSR or sustainable development report, and online. There is a growing need for companies to apply internet technology imaginatively and creatively to present their approach to CSR. We agree that many annual reports contain significant extraneous information that could be put to better use elsewhere, purely because insufficient thought seems to have been given to the question of whether the annual report is the appropriate forum for these disclosures.

It is not unusual to find that those companies who are making the most effort in relation to their environmental impacts are often those who say the least about it. In our experience many companies still find it difficult to communicate or report this aspect of their activities despite the fact that they take their environmental responsibilities seriously.   This situation often represents a missed opportunity that may, for instance, result in potential lost business particularly if the peer group is communicating this area in a more effective way. It also may assist reputationally harmful campaigning activities by organisations with an axe to grind.

One of the best solutions might be to join forces with your peer group.  A good example of this kind of approach is the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM). This a CEO-led industry group formed in 2001 to increase standards across the industry as a whole and to share best practice in relation to sustainable development.  It has also played a key role in encouraging the key industry players to knowledge share and develop a sector reporting framework to help companies report their approach to CSR effectively.  It is a good example of how strength in numbers can ward off suggestions of “greenwash”.