Berlin to reward good business conduct

The German government plans to make the country's first trademark for good business behaviour, as a complement to "Made in Germany" as a respected global brand.

Germany is the world's leading export nation but recognition of the need to combine business with corporate responsibility remains underdeveloped, especially among smaller companies, Olaf Scholz, Germany's labour minister, said.

Separately, the top United Nations official responsible for promoting corporate responsibility told the Financial Times that large German companies were lagging behind competitors because they are often "too selfsatisfied" to learn from developing countries or other businesses.

Mr Scholz announced plans for the new insignia at Germany's first government-backed congress on corporate sustainability. He said the trademark would be voluntary and would cover social and environmental standards, plus good labour practices and governance issues, such as anti-corruption policies.

"This should be part of German companies' efforts to maintain their good international reputation," he said.

Consultations with business, trade unions and civil society on the trademark would occur this year, officials said. Countries such as the US and the UK had promoted other 'best practice' initiatives but a trademark similar to the German model was less common, they added.

Company executives warned against creating extra regulations but said transparent standards were necessary, not least because of the negative impact on Germany's business reputation from a string of recent corruption affairs.

For instance, the investigations into engineering giant Siemens - where senior staff members allegedly paid large bribes to win telecommunications contracts - had damaged Germany's standing, speakers said. Marlehn Thieme, a senior Deutsche Bank official, said: "No Siemens shareholder can be happy with what is happening at present."

International business has been underpressure in recent years to promote social and environmental sustainability in its operations. Georg Kell, executive director of the UN's Global Compact programme, which links thousands of companies aiming to promote high sustainability standards, said that German companies - despite many single-issue initiatives - were failing "because they were often too self-satisfied with their own strong business reputations to have an open mind" towards new initiatives.

Speaking on the congress margins, he said that German companies had set international standards on clean technologies and on vocational training. But US and UK companies were better at "picking up new trends".