Lautermann, C.Building an alliance for CDR

Artificial intelligence, digital platforms, blockchain: the dynamics of digital transformation raises new social challenges and ethical questions. Regulation is necessary, but is barely keeping pace with technological innovation. As drivers of digitalization, companies have a special responsibility: corporate digital responsibility (CDR) is becoming a central field of action in the age of digitalization. However, despite the urgency of rethinking corporate responsibility in the context of digitalization, CDR is still largely unknown and barely developed. As digitalization is transforming all areas of the economy, companies in all sectors must grapple with the ethical and social implications. In order to avoid risks for themselves and society, but also to seize the opportunity to shape fair, humane and sustainable digitalization, all companies should develop a sophisticated approach to CDR. The basic study "Corporate Digital Responsibility" by the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) offers a well-founded concept for this. However, taking responsibility in the digital transformation cannot be left to each company alone. A strong alliance of politicians, associations and multipliers is needed to jointly pursue a strategy for the development and dissemination of CDR.

Recommendations for building an alliance to promote CDR:

1. Build a network - form a CDR alliance CDR pioneers from business, politics, associations, consulting, and science should initiate a multi-stakeholder network together with sustainability-oriented corporate networks and players from the financial sector and civil society as a point of contact and source of inspiration for CDR.
2. Winning over companies - reaching the SME sector
   The Alliance should address companies in a target group-specific manner and communicate the benefits of CDR in an operationally connectable way.
3. Create public visibility - enable comparisonBest practices and obstacles to CDR should be made visible through public information offerings. CDR ratings and benchmarking can be used to stimulate positive competition.
4. Provide a toolbox - enable application
   A toolbox with practical instructions, checklists, collections of examples and newly developed aids should help companies to develop CDR skills.
5. Develop standards - broaden the horizon for action
   The Alliance should advocate for broadly applicable CDR standards by helping to further develop existing CDR frameworks and integrate digital responsibility into relevant CSR standards.

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