Practices of Corporate Social Responsibility in Ukraine

Abstract

The article deals with the practices of CSR of leading in terms of sustainable development Ukrainian-based companies. The development of CSR in Ukraine is rather pushed by business than by society. Responsible initiatives are adopted by the subsidiaries of multinational corporations and by enterprises forming a company town; companies planning to go public publish CSR reports, whereas it’s a standard requirement. The participation of Ukrainian-based companies in sustainability initiatives (UN Global Compact), ratings (Gvardiya) and competitions (the center’s “The Development of CSR” business-cases competition) as well as the state of non-financial reporting of Ukrainian-based companies are analyzed. Thus according to the results of 2013 competition of the best non-financial reports con-ducted by the center “The Development of CSR” such companies as DTEK (GRI), SCM (GRI), Platinum Bank (GRI), Galnaftogaz (GRI) Interpipe (COP) were the winners. The responsible practices of Metinvest’s enterprises and the approaches to sustainable development of the subsidiaries of leading multinational corporations in Ukraine (Nestlé, Sun InBev, L’Oréal, Tetra Pak, Henkel) are presented. The authors come to the conclusion that companies’ approaches to CSR in Ukraine are mostly fragmentary and unsystematic and the demand for responsible initiatives in the Ukrainian society is relatively low. In this regard the increase of the population’s level of culture and awareness in social aspects of living may become an integral part and motivator of the transformation of Ukrainian-based company’s unsystematic responsible initiatives into the part of their business-strategy.