Month of January, 2010

This briefing note offers ways to reduce headcount and restructure that minimise the negative impact to individuals and communities, and which ultimately pay dividends to the organisation involved.

This report by World Economic Forum and Accenture examines opportunities for carbon emissions reduction across supply chains.

This book is intended for readers who work for businesses and support organizations interested in promoting sustainable procurement in developing countries. It asks how sustainable procurement by Western companies in global value chains can be increased in such a way that all chain actors, including the poor, benefit.

Marc Gunther's Blog on sustainable finance, environmental management, diversity management, shareholder engagement and lots of other business-in-society-related themes.

How are institutional or individual investors to know which companies are built to last, which are managed to serve their customers, workers and communities, and which of their boards are fulfilling their obligation to manage risk?

This article seeks to challenge the often taken-for-granted-assumption that firms should be accountable for the practices of their suppliers by espousing the moral (and sometimes legal) underpinnings of the concept of responsibility. The article highlights the use of code of conducts, corporate culture, anti-pressure group campaigns, personnel training and value reorientation as possible sources of wielding positive moral influence along supply chains.

The autors took a critical look at green marketing and found that marketers who have actually experimented with green messages generally found them much more effective than their typical messaging fare. But there are areas where it proved more and less effective. The authors studied the media used, the types of companies, and the internal management and politics of those organizations.

Be it male-female or multi-cultural, diversity is an offshoot of today’s global economy, the workforce more and more reflecting society’s make-up. But with unemployment having increased since the economic crisis, corporate diversity targets in the developed world, at least- are in jeopardy, with the remaining workforce left largely unmotivated, disillusioned, and prepared to jump ship at the next job offer.

A hands-on management briefing on real life ways big UK companies cut carbon, and their costs

The report report reveals what makes ethics policies and training programmes successful. This report has been compiled through extensive interviews with leading practitioners, consultants and industry experts. It provides guidance on how to develop your ethics policy and strengthen compliance through training.

This guide is intended to help those approaching CSR reporting for the first time, as well as those looking to deepen their understanding of what makes for a thorough CSR report. It will help readers, whatever their interests or experience, to identify quickly and easily the most valuable parts of these reports.

Authors of the publication, John M. Conley and Cynthia A. Williams, investigate the meaning of CSR to people in corporations and their various stakeholders, examining the ways in which CSR is practiced, and assessing the potential impact, within a company and beyond, of a firm's undertaking CSR initiatives.

This publication sixty renowned researchers and practitioners describe how we can harness the world’s leading institutions—education, the media, business, governments, traditions, and social movements—to reorient cultures toward sustainability.

How IMD prepares MBA participants for the real world

This report highlights the importance for all stakeholders to re-energize their efforts to address the opportunity for inclusively leveraging ICT as a catalyst for positive social and economic change. A commitment to inclusion creates opportunities for all.

This paper explains Oxfam’s Poverty Footprint Methodology, which helps companies to comprehensively understand how their operations affect the people in their value chains and the communities and countries where they operate.

Climate change is a business issue and businesses are responding with the things they do best: driving out inefficiency, innovating new technologies, products and services and pioneering new markets. But the truth is they are only concentrating on half the problem.

In thisworking paper the authors Antonio Argandoña and Heidi von Weltzein Hoivik say that, by adopting a blanket approach, we would be ignoring key tenets of social responsibility, such as recognizing the differences that exist between countries and contexts. Importantly, we would be diluting the ethical dimension, which lies at the heart of all these moves.

Blair Sheppard, dean of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, discusses how the expectations of MBA students are changing—and why the traditional MBA education needs to change as well.

Most research to date has focused on establishing a positive relationship between Corporate social performance and corporate financial performance to show that corporate involvement in social issues is consistent with maximizing wealth. This paper revisits this relationship to clarify the company's role in society and to suggest how managers can make decisions regarding a firm's CFP. 

The Female FTSE Index is announced each year in November, and attracts considerable press attention in the UK and internationally. It provided a measure of the number of women executive directors on the corporate boards of the UK's top 100 companies.

What is the role of social entrepreneurship in society? How are social entrepreneurs different from commercial entrepreneurs, social activists or charitable work?