A new report finds that Canadian companies have more good intentions than ever, but they aren’t necessarily following through.

The report, a collaboration by the Richard Ivey School of Business and Jantzi Research, found that overall corporate social responsibility scores were up in 2007 versus 2006, especially in the areas of corporate governance, employees and the community. However, the improved CSR scores tend to be driven more by changes in intentions than outcomes.

“Canadian companies are putting in place the correct structures, but now need to follow through on their intentions and step up to the plate,” said Tima Bansal, associate professor at Ivey and one of the leaders on the research.

The study also found that the improvement in socially responsible initiatives was widespread, driven by many firms making positive changes, not just a few firms making large leaps. Positive changes were seen in sectors such as banking and oil & gas. However, the retail, telecommunications and insurance industries appear to be lagging, it noted. Also, the majority of firms in the banking, and gold & precious metals industries performed worse on their environmental score in 2007 than in 2006. Other industries that rated poorly were chemicals, and energy, equipment and services.

For some companies, improvements in corporate governance, such as separating the roles of chair and CEO – were offset by increased executive compensation, which is generally regarded as an erosion of good governance, it said.

Companies on average invested more in diversity initiatives, although this was not accompanied by an increase in gender diversity at the senior management level, it added. Also, companies also invested more in maternity/paternity programs and were proactive in executing health and safety audits, but health and safety penalties and convictions actually increased.

“Policy is notoriously slow to impact outcomes. It can take years for the benefits of employment equity initiatives, for example, to be realized. In addition, some well-intentioned policies are not adequately supported by effective management systems, so they become difficult to implement in practice,” said Kevin Ranney, director of research at Jantzi Research.