Allow me to share my Case Study on VAUDE in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility that was conducted for MA Social Entrepreneurship in Tallinn University course CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility, Inclusive Business Strategies with Zsolt Bugarszki. Under the Case Study (downloadable), the website of VAUDE for their CSR-Report in full is shared and an image from VAUDE CSR-Report website is added to clearly demonstrate how their actions are closely following all 17 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Any feedback is highly appreciated.
VAUDE Corporate Social Responsibility_Merle Praakli
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Thank you for the feedback! In fact, I was only starting my analysis when the course assignment limit of the pages was reached, which is why in my report, I did not go any further to report each sector in detail. I will happily continue the report in a more detailed way not limiting myself with the '2 page framework' and will then edit the report in this space!
Thank you @Merle Praakli for uploading your paper. I like that you emphasized the measurement tools and the process of report validation. Such way I understand more your comment on @Lucas de Bont's post. You may consider to deal with these tools in a more detailed way as I am sure there is a market need for experts of impact measure and report validation :)
Thank you for the feedback and for the questions, Dianka! In regards of their mission, I would like to simply guide you to VAUDE's page about their philosophy, guiding principals and Code of Conduct "Wegweiser" that they created in 2016 (https://csr-report.vaude.com/gri-en/vaude/corporate-philosophy.php) which is demonstrating a great example of a successful social enterprise that introduces themselves proudly with saying "As a company that acts sustainably, we align ourselves with long-term, future oriented, ecological, social and economic goals". In general, in my report, one can clearly see all the responsible steps that VAUDE takes is to put their words into clear action towards their goals.
For your second question, I would like to guide you to a page where they talk about receiving the European Business Award, integrated CSR measures and other sustainable business models in budgeting, sales revenues, grants and partnerships (https://csr-report.vaude.com/gri-en/vaude/sustainable-business.php). In my opinion, VAUDE is a brilliant example of a social enterprise that has created systematic change to the level where their transparency, leadership when it comes to environmental and social responsibility printed into their business model and their willingness to despite their success is to forever evolve is indeed also financially profitable to all of its stakeholders even in more difficult times.
Very good report, Merle. It is common to see a company that invests significantly in one or a few dimensions of corporate social responsibility. However, it is not common to see one that invests this much in many, if not all, aspects of CSR. That is commendable. I am not sure about Vaude's mission, but I was wondering how they balance profitability with this level of CSR investments? What has been the return for Vaude from this level of CSR investment?