The United Nations Global Compact and Networks' Communication on Progress

The purpose of the Global Compact is to promote social dialogue with a view to creating global corporate citizenship to reconcile business interests with UN values and mandates demanded by civil society, trade unions and governments. These values translate into Principles related to the defence of human rights, labour standards, the environment and the fight against corruption. This Compact (based on the voluntary adherence of the world's businesses) consists of ten universal Principles that, in time and through learning, are supposed to become embedded in firms' strategic management and their value chain.

The Global Compact is not an instrument that businesses must compulsorily adopt nor does it pursue the objective of imposing a new regulatory framework. On the contrary, the Global Compact is a set of values and Principles proposed by the United Nations that businesses must voluntarily decide to impose upon themselves. In this manner, the Global Compact calls for the gradual incorporation of the ten Principles into a company's business practices. This entails great challenges for the management of any organization and even more so for a business which is, by definition, dynamic and innovative. Given the criticism targeted at the Global Compact (it does not control, it does not impose, it does not assess company behaviour), in 2004 the United Nations Global Compact Office installed integrity measures to protect the initiative's credibility.