450 Posts Found

Companies want to ensure the greatest environmental and economic return on each dollar (and hour) spent on sustainability. So which individuals or groups can you influence to support your sustainability efforts? Which individuals or groups pose the greatest business risk with respect to your environmental performance? Where do you start?

Companies should start by evaluating their stakeholders and then taking some counter-intuitive actions: Initiating partnerships with … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Stephen Linaweaver | Source: GreenBiz.com | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

Emerging alternatives to the shareholder-centric model could help companies avoid ethical mishaps and contribute more to the world at large.

Content: Article | Author: Marjorie Kelly | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: General, Social Responsibility (ESG)

A social business is a profit-making company driven by a larger mission. It carries the energy and entrepreneurship of the private sector, raises capital through the market economy, and deals with products, services, customers, markets, expenses, and revenues – but with the profit-maximization principle replaced by the social-benefit principle.

Content: Quotation | Author: Muhammad Yunus | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

An updated version of the 2007 report The Six Sins of Greenwashing has just been released. And like its predecessor, this version offers sensational findings: of 2,219 products making environmental claims that researchers found in North American retailers, “over 98 percent” committed one of several “sins.” The 2007 report identified six such sins. This year’s edition adds a seventh.

Content: Article | Author: Joel Makower | Source: GreenBiz.com | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

The climate debate has moved beyond the question of whether climate change is happening. The issue is no longer whether there should be limitations on carbon emissions, but when and how these limitations should be imposed. Do you know how much carbon dioxide your company emits to make its products or provide its services? In this article the authors spell out a practical way for … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Davide Vassallo, Peter J. Nieuwenhuizen, Philip W. Beall | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems.

Editor’s Note: you may or may not agree with this short article, but it is thought provoking and thus I think worth reading (including the comments)…

Content: Article | Author: Robert Nadeau | Source: Scientific American | Subjects: Economics, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Everyone agrees it is wrong to buy things made with sweatshop labor. Yet many of us are willing to justify our decision when a product—a pair of jeans, for example—is something we really want. HBS doctoral student Neeru Paharia and Professor Rohit Deshpandé study the dark side of buying behavior. Their good news: We can influence change for the better.

Content: Article | Authors: Neeru Paharia, Rohit Deshpandé | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

British journalist Jeffreys (Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug) presents a compelling account of the comprehensive collaboration of Germany’s major chemical conglomerate with Adolf Hitler’s genocidal dictatorship. The fourth largest industrial concern in the world, IG Farben was a key element of German foreign policy. Its employees were well treated. Its scientists won Nobel prizes. Its administrators created an international network controlling the … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Diarmuid Jeffreys | Subjects: Ethics, History, Social Responsibility (ESG)

No company today can avoid the issue of sustainability. How to approach this challenge remains an open question, however, as it can seem to be much more about what not to do than about out-performing the competition. In reality, leading companies are already turning sustainability to their advantage by applying the three building blocks of high performance.

In this report, we explain how sustainability has become … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Andrew J. Hoffman, Bruno Berthon, Eric M. Lowitt | Source: Accenture | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

In some ways, corporations are like liberal democracies. The shareholders of a company are like the people in whose interest the enterprise is run. The executive is like the government and the key to making it run successfully are the institutions that provide the checks and balances: the judiciary, the army, and bodies like the Federal Reserve Board in America have their counterparts in the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Amit Varma | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Accountability, Corporate Governance, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Procurement lies at the heart of a successful green strategy.

Content: Article | Authors: Martha Turner, Pat Houston | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Operations, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Companies concerned about their social and environmental impacts have a new tool for measuring and monitoring their activities.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has released its new Measuring Impact Framework, a guide for how to look at and assess impacts. The group worked its framework into an Excel-based guide, giving companies an outline for identifying, measuring and monitoring impacts.

The Framework includes four broad … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) | Subjects: Free Stuff / Tools, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Getting your business labeled green though a certification program has many benefits, but as companies are discovering, the simple act of choosing which program opens up a world of complications.

Content: Article | Author: Tilde Herrera | Source: GreenBiz.com | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Social Responsibility (ESG)

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We can ask ourselves if it is more advantageous for companies to be national or transnational. But a better question is how we can have firms that respond to the great “glocal” problems (pollution, poorness, respect for human rights) in their daily agendas. Can companies go from being “global capitalists” to being “glocal citizens”?

Content: Quotation | Author: Ãngel Castiñeira | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: International, Social Responsibility (ESG)

The uncomfortable fact for many green marketers–and targets of that marketing–is that genuinely going green would mean giving up most of the products and services that clutter our consumer culture. It would mean simplifying, valuing time and people over stuff. How can most products avoid the sin of the hidden trade-off? With a simple label: “You don’t really need this.”

Content: Quotation | Author: David Roberts | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Dr. Muhammad Yunus, 2006 nobel laureate and founder of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, addressed an audience of more than 700 on Oct. 20, 2007 at Pepperdine’s School of Law. His address was titled “Social Enterprise: Doing Well by Doing Good.”

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Muhammad Yunus | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: People, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Mix sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder theory and accountability, and you have the four pillars of corporate sustainability, an evolving concept that managers are adopting as an alternative to the traditional growth and profit-maximization model.

Content: Article | Author: Mel Wilson | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

While development economist Jeffrey Sachs has done most of his work in the public sphere he has done so with one, overriding intention — to improve the public good, namely to ameliorate the lives of poor people around the world. Here he is interviewed by Stephen Bernhut.

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Stephen Bernhut | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Economics, International, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Profit is a legitimate goal; maximizing profit is not. If it does that, it simply ignores the legitimate claims of all those who do not possess the power to affect its profitability. This would be a breach of the moral principle.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Thorsten Busch, Ulrich Thielemann | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Ethics, Social Responsibility (ESG)