Dialog with our stakeholders

Partnership is a core value of our corporate culture, which governs the way we work together. Applied to society, partnership means a willingness to enter into dialog. We cultivate an exchange of ideas with our stakeholders in various ways, depending on their specific needs and requirements.

Our business puts us in frequent and direct contact with various stakeholders: our employees, customers, suppliers, journalists, and investors, as well as representatives of government agencies and NGOs. In addition, our company reaches millions of people each day through our media content and products.

When dealing with our stakeholders, our values – the Bertelsmann Essentials – and our Bertelsmann Code of Conduct give us a clear assignment: Our company and its employees should always behave in the spirit of partnership, responsibly and ethically. But how can the diverse interests of our stakeholders be reconciled? How can we learn more about the expectations, demands and criticisms of our viewers, listeners, readers and users?

To meet our special responsibility to our stakeholders in our everyday conduct, we cultivate an open, transparent dialog with them. As a media company one of the things we focus on is, naturally, media policy. For example, we are represented on the relevant committees when it comes to the issues of broadcasting legislation and intellectual property protection in the digital age; we speak with our stakeholders and make our expertise available. Bertelsmann maintains representative offices in Berlin and Brussels for this purpose. The teams at Bertelsmann’s representative/liaison offices offer German and European policymakers expert sparring partners, up-to-date positions and figures, and further information. Our aim is to maintain close and transparent relations on all political levels and exchange arguments openly and objectively.

In addition to political communication, both offices are also places for meetings and dialog. Our office in Brussels regularly provides a forum for prominent speakers and authors such as Robert Harris, Michael Jürgs, Harald Martenstein, Hannu Raittila, Wladimir Kaminer and Dieter Hildebrandt. The "Rooftop Summer Screenings at Unter den Linden 1" series and other events such as literary-musical soirées, readings, book and movie premieres and political discussions have turned our "Unter den Linden 1" representation in the German capital into one of the foremost addresses in Berlin's cultural calendar. On average, 350 events per year are held at Bertelsmann Unter den Linden 1.

At an international level we are represented in important networks in which we discuss issues of sustainability and our efforts with groups from different sectors of society. For instance, in 2008 Bertelsmann joined the United Nations Global Compact. As part of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines for sustainability reporting, we are now involved in a working group that is developing specific indicators for the media industry.