Corporate accountability on sustainable activities demonstrates a willingness to further dialogue with stakeholders (people, customers and society in general) and increase transparency. The most commonly used media for accountability are reports, corporate social responsibility reports, annual reports etc. Those can be found for example on the website of the Global Compact (http://unglobalcompact.org/COP/notable_cops.html), corporate website or the Global Reporting Initiative website (http://www.globalreporting.org/NR/rdonlyres/E033E311-68E7-41F9-A97F-9F3B94F3FE40/4042/GRIReports19992010_14Apr2.xls)

Accountability is an effort to disclose balanced, accurate, unbiased information to stakeholders. However, being fully accountable is difficult for businesses, who in theory are meant to only seek short term profit and financial outcomes. Business mindset can encourage companies to take benefit from a better image or fake accountability (ex Green-washing or Blue Washing - ex. using the UN Global Compact (UNGC) as a branding tool - the UNGC is only a platform for businesses where civil society has very little to say).

What is good information? Knowing the truth of a company's actions is very difficult. Some company have fair, somewhat honest disclosure. There is of course a lot of hypocrisy in the field of CSR too. Doubt is always necessary as well as critical mindset.

Every people interested in the field should spend time knowing about how companies disclose, what civil society organizations say in their report (http://www.business-humanrights.org/). Being critical is important but should start people are informed of issues and existing initiatives (ex. accountability initiative such as the Global Reporting Initiative, the Carbon Disclosure Project, and many many more).

For critical thinking:
http://globalcompactcritics.blogspot.com/
http://www.corpwatch.org/
http://www.publiceye.ch/en/