CSR Management - CSR Report 2007

CSR management framework and CSR promotion system

CSR promotion setup, which expands CSR activities that make use of our business type and characteristics, is centered on the CSR and Internal Auditing Division, and improvements in CSR activities are based on independent evaluations and detailed activity indicators for five categories of business fields.

Evaluation results for Morningstar’s MS-SRI

Morningstar Japan K.K. (Morningstar) is a joint venture between SOFTBANK FINANCE CORPORATION and Morningstar Inc. in U.S. and provides comprehensive financial information, including the evaluation of equity investment trusts. Morningstar also publishes the MS-SRI Index (Morningstar Socially Responsible Investment Index), an index composed of selected SRI shares and was jointly developed with Center for Public Resources Development, the non-profit organization, as one part of its efforts to actively promote business related to socially responsible investing (SRI).
When selecting companies to be included in the index, companies are comprehensively evaluated in regards to both responsibility and creativity in five fields - governance/accountability, market, employment, society, and environment. Liquidity of shares is also taken into consideration.
As of FY2006, we have continually been selected since July 2003, when the 150 shares composing the MS-SRI index were selected.

Details of evaluation results

Governance/ accountability	There was high praise for the overall balance of efforts, including those related to establishing policies and systems, gaining an understanding of and disclosing information on the state of compliance (with laws and ordinances), and diversified communication and engagement. It is expected that these high quality efforts will be extended to all group companies.
Market	There was high praise for the broad and stable efforts, including creation of items such as the establishment of philosophy and scheme for customer relations, product quality and safety management, improvement of customer orientation, guidelines on price setting, provision of information to customers, and leading efforts in the use and management of customer information. In addition, the multifaceted efforts regarding vendors through policies and systems, for example, pioneering efforts related to items such as support for CSR at vendors, were praised.
Employment	There was high praise for the establishment and disclosure of concrete human resource strategies based on the corporate philosophy. Human right protection, diversified work styles for both regular employees and temporary employees, employment of the disabled, human resource development, and the balance between work and private life of employees were relatively highly praised, but there were demands for stronger efforts related to actual opportunities for women.
Social contributions	There was relatively high praise for the establishment of policies and systems, aggressive efforts related to employee participation, and evaluation of actual performances. There are demands for future efforts related to social contributions at overseas offices.
Environment	There was high praise for numerous efforts including, ISO certification for all offices, which covered establishing environmental policies, plans and targets, the full creation of an environment management plan, high level of green procurement based on GNP guidelines, collection and recycling of used parts and products out of consideration of product/service environment, faithful implementation of efforts related to the reuse and repair of parts, and aggressive efforts related to prevention of global warming. However, in regards to communication, the issue of a lack of third party participation in the creation of the environmental report was pointed out.