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Into big AFFAIRS

FurnCSR project: all you need to know about Corporate Social Responsibility in the furnishing sector – and not only

Stella Manferdini

Into big AFFAIRS

02.10.23

Keywords:

Theory , Social responsability , Corporate

FurnCSR Business Model CANVAS

CSR, an acronym for Corporate Social Responsibility, is today such a relevant business factor to be among the first points in the strategies of major international corporations. It is common knowledge that we cannot talk about business without ethics, to be understood both as a precise sustainability objective and as the creation of a shared value among all the company’s stakeholders. The latter is the theme of CSR, defined in the EU charters as “the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society”. This responsibility is intended to influence the way a company understands human rights, the rule of law, the community and the environment. CSR therefore means integrating responsible behaviour on a daily basis for the benefit of employees, customers and the company itself.

To this end, in April 2021 the Support for Social Dialogue programme of the European Union decided to co-finance FurnCSR, a project led by AMBIT Living Spaces Cluster and aimed at providing companies in the furnishing sector with practical guidelines to implement Corporate Social Responsibility and Shared Value. The tools provided by FurnCSR include a set of practical guidelines to address the industry’s major market issues, an innovative online tool to enable companies to self-evaluate their CSR level and an inventory containing the knowledge and skills employees need to acquire to enable companies to implement CSR practices.

These tools are designed to facilitate the communication of social responsibility by creating a culture of transparency on the impact that business has in different areas. In particular, these are the compliance with ESG rules, the behavior towards employees, the fight against corruption, the respect towards diversity in the composition of boards of directors and towards the human being in all his rights.

Cover of the FurnCSR Handbook

The final act of the project was held on March 30 2023 with the FurnCSR International Final Conference. Among the industry experts in support of the project were Roberto Cuneo – CEO & Founder of Medelhan – representatives of FederlegnoArredo – the Italian association of wood and furniture – and the European federations EFBWW and UEA, on behalf of employees and employers respectively. On that occasion, the functionality of the manual and the online tool have been unfolded. Now available to support companies to implement CSR practices and increase their competitiveness in the sector, the Handbook on Corporate Social Responsibility for Strengthening the Furniture Industry is a specific guide for shareholders and contains a collection of real case studies and practices from the furniture industry. The FurnCSR online Tool is designed to help companies measure and increase their performance. Accessible free of charge and presented in ten languages – English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Swedish and Czech – the two resources comprise 422 good practices and 204 case studies, collected with the collaboration of more than 120 companies.

An element to be underlined with respect to the structuring of the good practices is its business model, namely the FurnCSR CANVAS. Inspired by the model of Alexander Osterwalder, management theorist and bestseller author of Business Model Generation, it is a triple impact model, which considers the economic, social and environmental dimensions of the CSR. Moreover, this model takes into account 11 business blocks, each of which is defined under the economic, social or environmental dimensions. It is only in this way that CSR practices can be truly integrated into the business, preventing their trajectory from running parallel to other business objectives. Finally, the so-called 'CSR progress guideline' has been added, composed of five levels and with the aim of allowing companies to continue to move towards excellence by adopting good practices not yet implemented.

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