“Bronze medal” in accountability in 2008

The strategic and communications advisory form, Braun & Partners Network CSR has announced the accountability rating of the major Hungarian companies – Accountability Rating Hungary 2008 – for the third time. The rating was again topped by Magyar Telekom, followed by MOL and TVK managed to grab the third prize!

Magyar Telekom, MOL and TVK have been judged to be to top three major Hungarian companies in 2008 regarding the public communication of social, economic and environmental challenges. This year a total of 60 large companies were evaluated based on the preliminary listing of Figyelő Top200, including the 40 largest corporations and further 20 largest companies of the oil industry, telecommunications, electronic, public utilities and automotive industries.

Accountability Rating Hungary (ARH), the rating based on an international methodology and published in several other countries outside Hungary, evaluates – based on the public information, available for the stakeholders of the companies – how important the largest Hungarian companies consider to efficiently treat their social, economic and environmental challenges and how they integrate these aspects in their business strategies, corporate management and to what extent they involve their stakeholders in the decision-making processes. Accountability Rating is the most important evaluation system of corporate social responsibility (CSR) both in Hungary and internationally. This year the companies involved in the evaluation offered more assistance for the evaluators and published significantly more documents.

Besides the dimensions of evaluation (strategy, management and corporate management, the involvement of stakeholders), the effects were also examined in a fourth category. In this dimension, the environmental and social impacts of the companies were studied, including their changes in time, based on the publicly available information similarly to the other three dimensions.

The first place was again given to Magyar Telecom in the ARH 2008 rating, achieving 62.7 points. Magyar Villamos Művek (Hungarian Electric Works) did not make any of the first three positions this year, while MOL and TVK managed to finish as second and third.

The average performance of the evaluated companies increased from 17 points in 2007 to 27.3 – one reason for this is the development of the companies’ performance and the other is the changes in the international methodology. Like last year Hungarian companies achieved the highest results in the field of strategy, while the lowest points were given for management and corporate management

The article analysing the results will be published on 6^th November in Figyelő, while the full list can be accessed at www.accountabilityrating.eu.