Tag Archives: Accountability

From Conflict to Collaboration: Kimberly-Clark and Greenpeace Participate in LIVE Twitter Chat

06 Wednesday Aug 2014

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When two adversaries decide to cut across their divides to work together toward a bigger cause, Kleercutchances are there’s a story – or two – to be told, learned from and examined for replicable tips.

Five years ago, Greenpeace launched a nationwide campaign aptly titled #Kleercut to invoke consumer products giant Kimberly-Clark to reexamine its fiber sourcing standards. K-C responded by inviting Greenpeace to a meeting.

What emerged from a series of meetings that followed that initial, tense meet up was a collaborative framework that has shifted K-C’s sourcing standards and helped offer both greenpeace and kimberly clarkorganizations a tangible way to move forward on protecting and conserving forests worldwide.

Today, K-C reports a significant increase in its FSC-certified fiber use and notes higher sales across its Kleenex and Scott tissue brands.

Marking their “wood” anniversary, K-C’s Sustainability Strategy Leader Peggy Ward along with Greenpeace’s Richard Brooks and Rolf Skar, decided to participate in a live Twitter chat facilitated by TriplePundit’s Nick Aster and me on August 5, 2014.

The questions were flying in even before we started keeping the panelists busy through the hour and more: from a behind-the-scenes story about how the two began collaborating five years ago to the future of alternative fibers and how the organizations are working on connecting consumers with sustainability, we covered a lot of ground.

Tweetbinder KC-GP tweets stats

Here are the stats: http://www.tweetbinder.com/rs/db6u3eRDv67

For highlights, grab the #Storify version. And to also grab our audience’s perspectives, search for #ForestSolutions on Twitter!

People Get Sustainability, Business (and Marketers) Don’t: 20 Minutes with the CEO of Unilever

11 Friday Jul 2014

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Last month, Unilever CEO Paul Polman was in town – New York – to receive the Lifetime Achievement award from the Rainforest Alliance. As Rainforest Alliance President Tensie Whelan put it, “Paul has made several lifetimes of difference by leading Unilever to become a game changer.”

The company’s work with the Rainforest Alliance is well-known – by setting targets like sourcing 100 percent of its palm oil sustainably, Unilever has made it easier for other companies to follow suit and helped complex supply chains become comfortable with change and collaboration.

And, the company hasn’t stopped at palm oil.

Today, roughly 50 percent of the company’s tea originates on Rainforest Alliance Certified farms as it works toward sourcing 100 percent of its raw agricultural materials from sustainable origins (that figure currently stands at 48 percent).

Having recently interviewed Unilever’s Marketing Chief Keith Weed on the company’s refreshed goals and commitments, the opportunity to discuss sustainable development from the vantage point of the outspoken CEO was tempting. We caught up over a quick phone call:

The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan:

“When we launched it we said we don’t have all the answers. One of the reasons why we are working so wellUnilever CEO Paul Polman with Rainforest Alliance is because we share common goals. Take tea for example: Standards are driving up fast in an industry that’s not easy to standardize. [This is where the] scale of Rainforest Alliance is significant – and essential for the USLP to come alive.

“[Its] only been a year since the Rana Plaza fire happened. Those 1,050 women worked in conditions that were little more than modern-day slavery. We’re determined not to let that happen in our supply chain. So we’ve put some goals to match our resolve. We’re going to help more women gain access to training and land rights. The transformation can be substantial.”

Pushing forward in the absence of political will/action:

“In the absence of politicians, we need to move faster. Climate change is a great opportunity for business. Report from the White House is an encouraging sign. Needle is starting to move in the U.S. The tornadoes and hurricanes are starting to drive the message home for people.

“Besides, this is probably the only opportunity we’ll have. The Millennium Development Goals, for instance, are due to be completed next year – the urgency cannot be watered down.”

The most critical challenge for business:

“The biggest challenge is [that] we cannot scale our ambitious goals alone. It’s a major challenge to create the right partnerships and increasingly difficult to get the political sector to participate. How do you create size and scale in a vacuum?”

The changing role of marketers:

“I always say, don’t blame the consumers. There are many examples where consumers are leading business, especially the young ones. They’re changing our lives and systems.

“Consumers are speaking out everyday but we don’t want to see it. Then we say the consumer doesn’t want to change. If we can tap into the enormous movements, we can create change much faster. That’s the job of the modern-day marketers. Their job has changed. It doesn’t work any more to push consumption. We need a new model and get companies to adjust their marketing strategies as well as their job roles.”

People get it, business doesn’t:

“I spend a lot of time on how to develop leaders who can lead us through partnerships, with purpose, can think long-term and beyond 2020. On my way back from Abu Dhabi last month, I was reading an article that reported university students rebelling against the way economics [is being taught]. If teachers are teaching Milton Freidman’s theories, who is going to change the economy? For my kids, sustainability is the new normal. They don’t want to watch TV or buy the newest gas-guzzling car. Their generation is already thinking differently. Yet, marketers keep saying consumers don’t want it.

“Our understanding of consumers [and consumption] is too narrow. We need to get much closer to consumers. If we go to any of the emerging markets – 81 percent of the world’s population lives outside the U.S. and Europe – most of the growth is occurring in climate stretched areas today. They might not understand Rio+20 or climate change language but they know that weather patterns are changing, water is decreasing, etc.”

From mindless to mindful consumption:

“Marketers should switch from asking whether consumers are willing to pay for something to which consumer doesn’t want less poverty, more education, a healthier world with cleaner air and better nutrition.

“We just need to be astute about solutions. Look at the Edelman survey – consumers expect more and more from business, and if business understands this, it is a wonderful time. Children die from diseases which we can solve with hand washing – new market – marketers should be very excited by this. But that connection is not there.”

Three actions to change the world:

“We must get out of short termism because lots of solutions are long-term [climate change, access to education, water shortage, etc.] – and we can only solve them if we invest over longer periods and evaluate the social and economic capital. Then business people can optimize these. For example, 40 of the top 100 companies are already pricing carbon internally. They’ve committed to stay within these limits. Business is leading because they see the cost of action vs. inaction. We have now 40 countries that are pricing carbon including China. We have 20 other countries that are putting a tax on carbon. The system is starting to move.

“We need to give politicians Unilever Sustainable Livingconfidence that this [focus on sustainable development and long termism] will not kill jobs or stifle growth. The exact opposite is in fact true but we need to provide the proof points.

“We need to get companies to adopt integrated reporting quickly as well as become comfortable with transparency. It’s going to take much more than a nine-to-five job to bring all of this together. We need leaders and we’re short on them.”

If this was his last interview as the CEO of Unilever:

“We can use our scale to transform systems and change. We need to create a better place than the one we were born in. Ninety-nine percent of people are not in a position to make a difference. We can. We need to force change – it’s our duty to leave the place in a better place. I hope this drives Unilever and everyone else.”

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on June 2, 2014.

Carbon Policy: Inside Microsoft’s Efforts to Integrate Sustainability into its Financial Model

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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On July 1, 2012, Microsoft issued a new corporate policy across 14 business divisions in over 100 countries: Every division would now be accountable for its carbon emissions.

Under the Carbon Neutral and Carbon Free Policies, the company put an internal price on carbon, where the divisions pay an incremental price linked with the carbon emissions associated with energy consumption and business air travel. The funds are then used to invest internally in energy efficiency, renewable energy and carbon offset projects globally.

A tad ambitious?

Not at all, believes TJ DiCaprio, Senior Director of Environmental Sustainability at Microsoft.

“We’re following three pillars to achieve carbon neutrality: 1) Be lean through reducing our energy consumption by driving radical efficiency through use of technology, and reduce air travel to internal meetings. Our primary emissions, for example, come from our data centers’ energy consumption. We also monitor and reduce energy consumption from our offices and software development labs. That’s roughly 30 million square feet worldwide,” she explains.

The other two pillars: 2) Be green by investing in renewable energy and carbon offset projects; and 3) Be accountable through cascading an internal price on carbon globally.

The policies also help Microsoft employees band together beyond the usual. “By internalizing the otherwise external cost of pollution, the price of carbon is now part of the profit and loss statement across business divisions. We have now integrated this across the financial structure and engaged the TJ Dicaprio 2012executives and employees on our commitment to mitigating climate change and investing the funds  appropriately,” she says.

From Innovation & Efficiency to Sustainability

For a long time, the marketplace has associated the technology giant with innovation and efficiency. Now, the company is vying for a third accolade: sustainability.

Acknowledging the impact the company can have in swaying the entire marketplace, DiCaprio says: “We’re constantly asking how we can lean and green our operations. Where can we not only drive efficiency, but also increase the percentage of renewable energy we purchase. How can we support the supply and demand and how can we drive progress through long-term renewable energy purchase agreements.”

Of course, there are other ways Microsoft is becoming greener. For instance, how can the company that reaches over 100 countries support carbon sequestration in developing countries? “When there is sustainability, education, and jobs – all of these tie together when we’re discussing carbon offsets and supporting low-carbon economic development around the world. In fact, offsets are significantly important in extending our reach and value globally,” she emphasizes.

Carbon Offsets: The Allure for Microsoft

In the last two weeks, I had heard similar sentiments from Barclays and Allianz, both financial institutions with global footprints – and investing significantly in carbon offsets. Why then was offsetting not spreading across more organizations? DiCaprio believes there are multiple factors, not least, a challenge in transparency.

“The market is maturing and we are seeing a more professional approach to using technology to manage and store data as well as established standards. There is a growing confidence in the ability of these projects to meet stiff criteria and standards, and to continue to meet these standards over time as cloud services allows for data to be managed and stored, demonstrating lower leakage. We employ a rigorous approach to our investments,” she says.

And herein comes the alignment, i.e., how DiCaprio’s team is managing its carbon reduction policies as a lever to align its business priorities around how technology can enable transparency, education and sustainable economic development. One of the offset providers Microsoft works with is Wildlife Works – who run the Kasigau project in Kenya– with an emphasis on carbon sequestration, social enterprise, and wildlife preservation. “We have been working with them for a year now. We believe that climate change is a serious challenge, and supporting carbon sequestration through carbon finance supports local jobs and provides new educational opportunities for the youth – making a huge difference in improving lives.”

Scale: Impact Through Leadership

Her only worry: without more private sector involvement, Microsoft’s efforts will remain insular.

“This is an exciting time for the private sector to work across our stakeholders and create corporate policies that make sense for business and help support low-carbon economic development. One of the benefits of setting a carbon neutral policy and an internal carbon fee is to set an example for how a business can run more efficiently, reduce waste and carbon, and address its environmental footprint,” she says.

“The model we have designed is simple and repeatable. The more organizations that adopt a similar model, the better off we will all be. The model is built to align with an organization’s  priorities and business strategy while supporting the demand and supply of renewable energy and a low-carbon economy,” she added.

Having recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of the carbon fee implementation, DiCaprio believes it is fulfilling its purpose of bringing together the business mission and a priority of driving efficiency and developing low-carbon economies. While the first year was focused on building the necessary infrastructure to flow through a financial cycle and get the price associated with emissions charged to business units, now DiCaprio also sees the importance of communicating the benefits of the successful model.

“The more we can communicate that carbon finance is a very effective way to integrate the cost of pollution into our economic structure, the more we can help others integrate carbon pricing and the impact of climate change into long-term business planning,” she says.

After all, it’s about taking into account the true cost of doing business.

And DiCaprio’s aspiration speaks to a global sentiment awaiting global acceptance: “We must understand quickly how to tie managerial accounting and the real cost of doing business with traditional financial models. For example, Microsoft pays for energy consumption but it also pays for the cost of offsetting the pollution associated with it. This is the direction we need to follow.”

As the technology company continues its journey, DiCaprio hopes many more organizations will pivot and begin to leverage the “magic of creating and supporting new markets that support sustainability on a global basis.” Only time will tell if once again Microsoft can attract some followers.

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on September 12, 2013.

The Social & Environmental Case for Carbon Offsetting: In Conversation with Barclays

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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This is Part 1 of a series examining how leading companies are leveraging carbon offsetting and REDD+  to sustain their environmental footprint and target climate change.

“Our vision is about having a proportionate social impact on society.”

That’s how Jillian Fransen, Barclays’ director of Citizenship describes the bank’s elevated – and recently refreshed – sustainability agenda. Among the new elements: a three-year CSR strategy released last year, new stretch environmental targets, supporting growth among the SME sector, and a new Balance Scorecard, which benchmarks remuneration for the bank’s top 125 executives according to four Cs – one of which is Citizenship.

Fransen’s team is also on the cusp of launching an industry-leading Code of Conduct, besides managing and maintaining a 60 million-pound Community Investment Fund and a 20 million-pound Social Innovation Fund, created specifically to seed projects and partnerships that really push the needle on sustainability.

But, of all the things Barclays is doing, what piqued my interest was a core concentration on reducing its unavoidable emissions through carbon offsetting in the company’s climate program.

Carbon Offsetting: Need vs. Efficacy

Now while carbon offsetting has suffered from its share of misconceptions – and remains a relatively new idea in the U.S. – there is a critical need today to get past the debate and begin addressing unavoidable emissions.

Because despite the most robust plans in place that curb air travel and other activities, commerce requires both energy and fuel. And with the growth, availability – not to mention supporting infrastructure – of renewables relatively slow, it becomes a question of operating with what’s available. That is the reality for businesses. And Barclays is no exception.

Calling them “unavoidable emissions,” Fransen explained:

“We buy offsets for the footprint we incur outside our minimization program. We are doing everything we can to minimize emissions but there are those unavoidable emissions that we just cannot remove – like air travel. So to minimize their impact, offsetting fits quite well in our Climate Program.”

The Program focuses on three areas: climate change, developing products for low carbon economies and risk management services for clients with low carbon opportunities.

The firm, which wants to minimize its environmental footprint by 10 percent by 2015, works with Wildlife Works and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation [REDD+] projects for its offsets strategy. According to the United Nations website, REDD+ “is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development.”

As Sibilia decoded in his article, the intended impact of the offsetting (emission reductions) leads to not only forest conservation but also a parallel movement to create self-sustaining social enterprises that recuperate the local economies and build social independence. Therein lies the true impact of UN REDD Programmeoffsetting, he concluded.

For Fransen, similarly, the appeal of working with REDD+ lay in Wildlife Works’ expertise and experience in protecting threatened forests  – and its track record with local communities. “Twenty percent of emissions come from deforestation so it made sense for us to partner with organizations that could help us find areas where forests were being destroyed. That way we can have direct impact where it is most needed,” she said.

Then there is the added advantage of targeting local communities in key markets where Barclays operates. “We wanted to take accountability for our footprint. Additionally, Wildlife Works operates in Kenya, which is a key market for us. We are in 13 African countries – the oldest bank across eastern Africa — so having an on-the-ground partner there was key for us. ”

The real impact of implementing a carbon offsetting strategy then for Barclays?

“Create accountability for a footprint that the firm is otherwise unable to get rid of. That wakes people up. When we can have localized impact, it’s a win for us,” she responded.

Climate Change: Decoding the Impact of a Bank

Besides what seems to be the main area – air travel – what is Barclays most challenging source of carbon emissions?

“We have a network of hundreds of small branches. Our biggest challenge is availability and collection of relevant data about our water and paper use as well as waste. Not all our operations have the same level of management and facility support. Especially in Africa, it is very hard to ensure commitment to some of the improvements that are required in this year,” she said.

Another challenging area is the bank’s indirect impacts through its lending practices. “Where we choose to lend and what impact that has on the environment is critical. We need to hit this on a macro level. When you go to lend to an oil and gas company, we need to stand up to our commitment. They work with a minimum of 16 banks – we’re one piece of a large network,” she explained.

The Need For “Some Serious Leadership”

While our conversation mostly focused on Barclays’ carbon reduction strategy, it was hard to contextualize that without questioning what role Fransen’s contemporaries in the financial sector needed to play to sensibly address climate change.

Could Barclays continue to make progress without reciprocation from a sector busy repairing tarnished reputations from the financial crisis?

“There is a major shift going on toward a realistic understanding of what we need to do to adapt to climate change. In my opinion, none of this is happening quickly enough though. We need some serious leadership within our industry in the next five years to change gears on climate change,” she emphasized.

“Our biggest challenge is making it real for everyone in the organization. We have 142,000 employees that manage a matrix of clients and customers. The [impact they can have] is profound. I’d like to see us capitalize on this matrix much more. There’s a feeling, not limited to banking, that we’re doing our bit and everyone else will do theirs – and we’ll be okay.”

“Fact is, the issues are way more pressing for us to rest on that assumption.”

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on August  28, 2013.

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As Delaware Registers its First Benefit Corporations, a Conversation With the Early Adopters

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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On August 1, 2013, Delaware welcomed a record 17 companies to register as Delaware benefit corporations on the statute’s first effective …

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2011: The Year Business Learned to Say Mea Culpa

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

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These were just some of the things that kept us busy in 2011. While some represent the changing marketplace, others are age-old struggles between activists, consumers, employees and corporations. Yet, they all represented the emergence of new forces at play in our corporate corridors.

Yes, 2011 represented despair for many – the jobseekers, the underemployed, the single parent, the shopper, the CEO, the trader – but with despair, as CSRwire’s CEO Joe Sibilia noted, comes hope, adaptability and often, solutions.

And it is at that stage that most of us converged in 2011.

Transparency: Is Business Ready?

Take, for example, the recent BSR conference held in San Francisco. My panel addressed a topic that is bound to get most of us shifting in our chairs: Sustainability in a Hyper-Transparent World. Ouch, right? Joined by executives from Oxfam, Intel and SourceMap, the conversation included several uncomfortable moments (I offered up Zappos as an example to the audience, citing that the company livestreams its all hands meeting in order to live its mission of “building open and honest communications.”) and featured several probabilities, suggestions, and potential solutions by a group that included lawyers, sustainability executives, CSR officers, reporters, strategists, entrepreneurs as well as nonprofit leaders.

“When you are increasingly naked, fitness if not optional.” – Macrowikinomics

That the panel attracted a full room of senior executives willing to discuss difficult issues like privacy, corporate governance and stakeholder responsibility is a start.

The C-Suite Headlines Sustainability

Till last year, while much was being written about CSR and sustainability, executives were largely absent from the dialogue. In 2011, this changed ever so subtly. Earlier in the year, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn took the stage at one of the year’s most prolific conferences, the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship’s annual conference. He discussed the importance of employee wellbeing, organizational design, transparency (Kathleen Edmond was the first Chief Ethics Officer to start a blog on ethical issues in the workplace) and the importance of stakeholder engagement.

“The more you peel the onion, the more you realize there is to be done. You just need to be constantly excited about peeling the onion.” – Brian Dunn, CEO, Best Buy

At Net Impact, Nike’s Hannah Jones took the stage as did REI CEO Sally Jewell. BSR kept the momentum going by featuring Ofra Strauss, CEO of the Strauss Group, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and Anheuser-Busch CEO Carlos Brito.

These chiefs weren’t exactly looking to gain brownie points. They were after all speaking to the choir in some respects and to an audience that for the most part, gets business and social responsibility. But what made each of them stand out was their honesty about the difficult problems facing us today – a first? – agreement on the role of business in adding to today’s social and environmental mess.

“In the last few years, business has lost tremendous trust in the marketplace. That we are GOOD now rests on us.” – Ofra Strauss, Chairperson and former CEO, The Strauss Group

Mea culpa, they all said. Followed by: Here’s how we are trying to change ways, rethink growth, repurpose missions and reengage stakeholders.

That’s a start.

Social Media Engagement: 140 Characters Rule

Despite all the naysayers of social media, there is no denying that for any organization that sells a product or service today, having a dedicated presence on Facebook and Twitter is a prerequisite. With engagement reaching never-seen-before proportions, even Chief Sustainability Officers are learning to communicate in 140 characters or less.

“We must see social problems as business opportunities.” – Carol Cone, EVP, Edelman

But several companies dipped their toes in active engagement by trying out new formulae: Best Buy released their annual CSR report by hosting a live webinar (that I moderated) with their Sustainability team and a parallel conversation on Twitter. As I quizzed them about the report, questions poured in from Twitter: What was Best Buy doing in the area of conflict minerals? What about human rights? Recycling? How about consumer education? And why the low diversity ratio of employees?

Squirm they did, admitting that the issues were complex they did, but answer they also did.

They weren’t the only ones though.

Timberland (that was acquired by VF earlier in the year) launched their new Communications portal, McDonald’s hosted a live chat on Twitter with VP of CSR Bob Langert, UPS held several chats during the holiday season from sustainable gifting to green packaging choices.

Communicating your sustainability story is an important cog in the wheel called trust and the choice to engage is no longer a valid option. How you choose to do so, however, will continue to differentiate you from your competitor.

Making Business Sense out of Sustainability

Several large organizations came forward in 2011 asking jobseekers and students applying for jobs in sustainability and CSR to understand how to relate their core competencies and knowledge to the issues facing us today, i.e., water depletion, carbon emissions, climate change, etc.

How can depleting levels of water relate to a professional services firm, for example, or a bank? Why must a software company invest in engaging and educating its supply chain?

Climate Corps: Creating Jobs & Savings

The Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps program is one of very few initiatives that have managed to tie sustainability with business strategy and growth while creating jobs out of the process.

From placing seven MBA candidates as summer fellows in 2008, the program has quickly grown in popularity, placing 96 students at 78 companies in 2011. The fellows spend an entire summer working with their host companies on identifying energy efficiency solutions, implementing carbon management processes and helping diverse businesses embed environmental sustainability into their strategies.

The results: Millions in savings. While few get direct job offers from the Fellowship, most have had success finding jobs where their unique mix of experience, passion, and the ability to tie business strategy with sustainability, is appreciated and utilized in changing processes, setting standards and adapting organizations to a fast-changing reality of limited resources.

This is a start.

Organizational Design & Sustainability

Where does sustainability fit in your organization?

Everywhere, really, is the only correct answer, irrespective of where the chief sustainability officer sits. This, finally is getting addressed by what I consider a crucial component at any company: The HR and recruitment teams. In collaboration with IE Business School, I moderated seminars with recruiters, HR directors and organization design consultants on the value of CSR in candidate recruitment and retention.

We discussed the relationship between productivity, values, respect and growth. We heard from students who want to work for socially responsible companies and executives who are redirecting their organizations to instill a culture of ethics, responsibility, accountability and pride.

Mea culpa, most of them said. That’s a start.

Originally written for and published on CSRwire’s Commentary section Talkback on December 30, 2011.

KPMG’s Citizenship Director: Occupy Wall Street Protests Must Drive [Business] Transformation

31 Monday Oct 2011

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“The greatest way to change the world is _________.”

That’s how KPMG’s Director of Citizenship and Diversity Lord Michael Hastings started the opening keynote at this year’s Net Impact Conference in Portland, Oregon.

In the next half an hour that followed, the former — and the first ever — CSR director of BBC offered observations that felt alternatively poignant, realistic and perhaps unattainable.

On America’s prison system:

We must recognize that social dysfunction is a critical part of our reality and is perilously expensive.

On 9/11:

I say this with the utmost respect in my heart for the victims of 9/11: It has cost us one trillion dollars and over 6,700 deaths to avenge one event. Within hours, what was supposed to be the war on illiteracy – remember the picture from that day of President Bush reading to a classroom of kids? – became the war on terror.

Today, we are facing the repercussions of that decision. Now, we must switch on our acutest sense: Our intuition and listening power.

On Occupy Wall Street:

[We have to figure out] how do we respond? Because we have to. These protests must drive transformation, which can only come through sacrifice, only by accepting responsibility.

On the answer to changing corporate culture and mindsets:

The answer is cynicism. This is an understanding that I am responsible for the conflicts around me, that I absorb the duty, steel my back and face society to do the unexpected.

On reputation:

We cannot build a reputation on what we are ‘going to do.’ Our moral fiber, clarity of values, past record and leadership contribute to our ultimate reputation.

On the role of people in business growth:

A change in reporting is occurring that will correctly calculate the real assets of a business. Integrated reporting offers this framework for the future. We’re in a time when the idea of responsible capitalism is becoming a part of business strategy. We must continue with it.

And his answer to the earlier question?

“Overcoming cynicism”

Occupy Wall Street & Corporate America According to Michael Moore

25 Tuesday Oct 2011

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Interesting segment of Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN with Michael Moore in the hot seat and a live town hall to discuss Occupy Wall Street. Some of the highlights that made me think:

Who is to blame for today’s mess?

MM: One hundred percent corporate America. I don’t blame the government because corporate America funds and rules the government. The politicians act as their funders ask them to so blaming D.C. isn’t going to help anyone. The root cause is corporate America.

Are the “Occupiers” against capitalism or capitalist greed?

MM: Depends on who you ask. For students, this is about the debt they have when they graduate. For the parents, it’s the mortgage they owe on a house that is worth less than half of what they owe in debt. For many others, it is unemployment, lack of affordable health care, the manipulative bank industry and so much more.

Apple has more employees in China today than domestically and in many ways the company has become emblematic with capitalism. Isn’t China at least part of the problem?

MM: Part of the problem yes but do you know how much debt a student has when he/she graduates from Peking University? Zero dollars. American students? An average of $35,000.

It all started when General Motors decided that making $4 billion in profits wasn’t enough. That they had to stretch it to $5 billion and to do so, they would have to migrate tens of thousands of jobs to China.

And guess what, if Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were two entrepreneurs trying to start Apple today, they would have received no help from their local or national banks. That’s the America we are living in today.

——————

Also on my radar, the excellent coverage on CSRwire’s Talkback lately re: Occupy Wall Street:

Occupy Wall Street Considers A New Economy
Is the Occupy Movement a Call for Sustainability?
For Responsibility, Occupy Government as well as Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street: The Average Joe Interprets Corporate Social Responsibility

19 Wednesday Oct 2011

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Earlier this week I was at the annual PRSA conference in humid and beautiful Orlando, Florida. Before you think that I have switched tracks from journalism to PR, stop right there! I was on site to speak on an interestingly personal topic: Sustainability: Walking the Walk.

Sustainability: Walking the Walk with CSRWire & Ethical Markets

Joining me on the panel were CEO of CSRwire Joe Sibilia and Executive Director of Ethical Markets Rosalinda Sanquiche. Sibilia started off the panel by talking about Occupy Wall Street. Not because he wanted a room full of dissent but because for Sibilia, as he emphasized on a recent Fox Business show, OWS goes to the heart of corporate social responsibility: A responsible capitalist system that takes into account a business’ social, economic and environmental stakeholders.

From a room of roughly 45 attendees, almost everyone raised their hands. However, when he followed up by asking how many understood what the protestors are demanding, the hands fell to a single digits. So, before I go any further, here’s a two-part question for you:

And:

Here’s the thing: Because so many continued to disagree with the holier-than-thou voice of CSR, claiming it is another cost business doesn’t need, a burden, not a business priority, so on and so forth, Michael Porter gave us an easier concept to embrace: Creating Shared Value.

You Don’t Get CSR? How About “Shared Value”?

Many more understood the economical efficacy offered by shared value than the tardy, accusatory and undefined acronym of CSR. But CSR as well as creating shared value are concepts spearheaded by economists, business leaders, researchers and activists.

Now we are all being forced to recognize and acknowledge a movement created by the average Joe (no pun intended!) demanding business to be more responsible, equal and just.

They want to be able to work, to have a home, a family. They want the right to live comfortably.

In other words, corporate social responsibility.

Yes, it’s one and the same thing, except now it’s not the activists or the bloggers taking up the case but an undefined mass of people who come from different backgrounds, experiences and age but are commonly united on one front: Fairness.

Regardless of whether you physically join the Occupy Wall Street protestors, it is far more important that you understand their message and recognize that this is your one chance to make things right.

Yes, You the Average Employee Can Make a Difference

So, go ahead: Nudge your boss to offer job sharing opportunities to candidates.

As a job candidate, question the recruiter on the company’s mission, values, priorities. As a student, ask your faculty to discuss business cases in context of economic recessions, environmental degradation and social upheaval.

Ask the tough questions, the right questions. As Michigan’s Ross School of Business Professor Aneel Karnani recently said, “You get the kind of government you vote for.” We as professionals and students get the kind of corporation we choose to work for.

This is your chance to influence business as an employee, a manager, and as a prospective candidate. For the longest time we have been told to vote with our dollars. Now it is time to vote with our expertise and professional skills.

Question is, are you up for it?

11 Challenges for Corporate Sustainability: A Review

24 Saturday Sep 2011

Posted by in CSR, CSR reporting

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Early this year, at the Global Reporting Initiative’s official launch in North America, Director of the Conference Board’s Center for Sustainability David Vidal asked a room full of senior CSR and sustainability executives:

What are the top three reasons for your company’s reluctance to embrace sustainability—and adopt sustainability reporting?

Now, as I prepare my keynote presentation for the Center’s annual summit next week on Innovation, Sustainability & Social Media, the answers to David’s question six months ago remind me of how quickly some businesses — and the sustainability space — are evolving.

Here’s what I wrote then on Vault’s CSR blog:

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The responses that came from an audience representing the glitterati of the corporate social responsibility world might surprise.

Keep in mind that a majority of them (I’m almost tempted to say all) don’t need another lecture on the business case for CSR or sustainability, are active advocates, and represent companies that–for a multitude of reasons–recognize the link to their bottom lines.

What these responses point to, however, is the continued sense of reluctance across senior leadership toward combining the social and environmental with corporate. The path to effective CSR isn’t a linear process by any means and these responses should help those who continue to struggle with mental and ideological barriers within their companies.

Because knowing the challenge is half the battle.

As you go through these, make an elementary checklist. Which of these sound familiar? How did you tackle them? Do any seem/remain insurmountable in the current corporate reality of thrift and inflexibility? Share your perspectives by leaving a comment or connecting with me @AmanSinghCSR.

And, without further ado, and in no particular order:

  1. Doubt
  2. Liabilities
  3. Denial
  4. Resources
  5. Causality
  6. Lack of Global Standards
  7. Benchmarking
  8. Lack of comparative credibility
  9. Uncertainty
  10. Fear of the unknown
  11. Fear of the known

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My estimation is that this list continues to evolve depending on the industry, the chief in charge, and even by which quarter we are in.

In coming days, I will review these challenges  — after hearing from some of business’ most eminent executives at the Annual Summit —  and hopefully shed some light on how some businesses’ have indeed managed to overcome them, and found advantage in doing so.

Stay tuned!