Sign me up for this market capitalism:
The Danish state co-owns many enterprises such as Cheminova
and Scandinavian Airlines, and it also plays a potentially even more impor-
tant role as owner of one of the country’s largest investment pension founda-
tions, ATP. ATP’s investment policies about which companies to invest in
reveal the criteria and values that ATP and, therefore, the Danish state uses
ATP and, therefore, the Danish state uses to decide how to invest the Danish
citizens’ savings. Cheminova, Scandinavian Airlines and ATP have all expe-
rienced severe criticism of their social and environmental business conduct
about, for example, chemical products causing severe injuries among
Latin-American end-users, unrealistic high prices in illegal cartel-type alli-
ances, and economic investments in companies pursuing deforestation of vir-
gin rain forests to achieve attractive timber. The Danish state has defended
the state-owned enterprises’ actions when critiqued, and state-owned enter-
prises themselves have basically provided two types of crisis communication
strategies in response to the accusations of neglect of social and environmen-
tal responsibilities: either to answer that “we are in compliance with the law”
or “we are in dialogue with the relevant people and organizations and we try
to influence and change their behavior” as if the very process of “being in
dialogue” is sufficient to retain legitimacy (Christensen, Morsing, & Cheney,
2008). Such responses have left an impression of a government that denies
further responsibility.
Interestingly, while these Danish cases of state-owned enterprises’ lack of
responsibility stirred much media mention and debate about the role of the
state, they did not fundamentally question the role and legitimacy of the
Danish government or the politicians. Perhaps because no Danish citizens
died as in the New Zealand case. Perhaps because the Danes are a trusting
people. Perhaps too trusting? Or perhaps the Danish people have become
too welfare-complacent to insist on scrutiny of governance of state-owned
enterprises?
In the wake of these critical incidents for Danish state-owned enterprises,
it has been interesting to observe the Danish government launch of a “CSR
Action Plan” in 2008 with specific mention of the responsibility of state-
owned enterprises. A law was passed the same year making it compulsory for
the largest 1,000 companies to report annually on their CSR activities. A
central part of the CSR Action Plan focuses on activities for the Danish gov-
ernment to ensure that public authorities, including state-owned enterprises,
live up to the same CSR requirements as their privately owned corporate
counterparts. The Danish government’s CSR Action Plan very concretely
points at 10 initiatives to ensure social responsibility in corporate, state, and
other public activities, and for the purpose of this essay, it is particularly
interesting to note that two of these initiatives specifically target state-owned
enterprises: The government will (a) include state-owned enterprises in the
legislation about compulsory annual CSR reporting and (b) the government
will have all state-owned enterprises sign the UN Global Compact (http://
www.samfundsansvar.dk/sw60606.asp).
While a legislation concerning state-owned enterprises has so far not been
passed, normative pressure and encouragement from the Danish Government
and the National Council for Social Responsibility have made the state-
owned enterprise SKI (the central authority for all state purchases) start a
comprehensive reorganizing process to ensure that sourcing and investing
include social and environmental considerations. SKI has, as I write, made a
special announcement that they are now going through all their suppliers and
will prioritize as most preferred suppliers those that have demonstrated
adherence to the United Nation’s Global Compact principles. In that process,
SKI will naturally deselect those that do not.
