A recent article on MarketWatch.com discusses the need for having Corporate Social Resoponsibility reports independantly verified and assured.

This article includes research recently released from the, Assure View - The CSR Assurance Statement Report. Which is the first report to offer an independent, comprehensive overview of the area of CSR.

Article excerpt:

Do we trust government? Most people don't. Do we trust business? Most people don't. Do we trust what we are being told by the media? Nope. We are being asked again and again to trust. But how can we verify?

This year some 3,000 companies are expected to publish corporate social responsibility reports to document their policies and performance on environmental and social activities. Of these, just 750 will include a third-party assurance statement addressing the report's credibility and completeness, according to a new study sponsored by SGS, KPMG, LRQA and The Reassurance Network.

"While CSR reporting has become a basic business expectation, the majority of CSR reports aren't independently assured. This casts serious doubts on the role, meaning and reliability of these non-assured CSR reports," the Assure View study says.

Meanwhile, consumers aren't buying the ethical business label: As much as 80% of consumers in certain areas think that companies simply pretend to be ethical in order to sell more products.

Read the full article