Fortune recently announced its annual top 100 “Most Accountable Companies”, comparing the world’s largest corporations in the Fortune Global 500 by the quality of their commitment to social and environmental goals. The companies were examined in four criteria: strategic intent, governance and management systems, engagement and operational performance. Among the top performing Asian companies, eight are Japanese, with Toyota Motor topping the list (#15), four are South Korean (top one is SK Holdings #51) and three are Chinese (with State Grid ranked at #55). Click here for the full list.

This week's newsletter is the second issue covering the CSR Asia Summit 2008, which took place on the 3rd and 4th November in Bangkok. It includes 11 pieces of panel sessions review. We will post the rest on next week's issue.

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Two weeks before the start of key talks on global warming, the UN's climate-change watchdog issued figures on Monday that reflected poor headway by industrialised countries towards curbing dangerous carbon pollution. Greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 so-called Annex 1 countries under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change were almost unchanged in 2006, falling by a mere 0.1 percent from 2005, the UNFCCC said. Here is the story.

This article from the Bangkok Post interviewed global executives from the likes of Lenovo, Shell and Petra Group, who insist that business organisations should continue CSR practices in tough economic conditions to maintain brand trustworthiness and create stronger brand value. Luk Van Wassenhove, director of the INSEAD Social Innovation Centre, said the crisis would separate companies with a genuine commitment to CSR from those that faked their concern. On the other hand, Vinod Sekhar, president and chief executive of Petra Group said that big companies should lead by example and provide strategies for small and medium enterprises to follow.

The China Human Development Report, published this weekend by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), evaluates the delivery of four essential basic public services - primary and junior secondary education, basic health care, social insurance and employment services. Echoing the Government’s new stimulus plans to curb the economic slowdown, the report calls for accelerating the equal provision of basic public services for every Chinese citizen. The report stresses that ''gaps between urban and rural areas, across regions and among different social groups have been widening, posing serious challenges to equitable human development, and underscoring the need for the equalization of basic public services".

As though right on cue, this story comes along that demonstrates the central thesis of some training that Ashley Hegland (from Edelman) and I did during the CSR Asia Summit in Bangkok recently. The half-day workshop suggested that many companies don't really have a good handle on how the social media is being used in Asia, and we provided lots of examples showing that (along with some ideas about what companies could be doing). So the story (running hot on a huge Chinese BBS forum) really shows exactly what we are saying. A young woman working for the world's largest manufacturer of sports shoes (Yue Yuen) has written about her life in one of the company's shoe factories in Dongguan. The story has resulted in over 800 responses, some of which are from young migrant workers who have had similar experiences. They also write about what they’ve been suffering in factories around Dongguan and criticise work conditions. Someone has even posted part of a research report about the shoe manufacturer in question done by Li Qiang of China Labour Watch back in 2002.