2Sustain

In what’s being billed as the most comprehensive survey of corporate responsibility (CR) reporting ever published, KPMG found that CR reporting has reached an all-time high –but unfortunately, the reports lack rigor.

KPMG’s International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting 2011 reviewed trends of each of the Global Fortune 250 (G250), as well as 3,400 companies worldwide, representing the national leaders in 34 countries and 15 industry sectors.

The research showed that:

• Nearly all (95 percent) of the G250 companies report their corporate responsibility activity.
• More than half (64 percent) of the largest 100 companies (N100) in each country report –that’s up 11 percent since 2008, with developing nations showing fast uptake.

KPMG also compared CR reporting activity across different countries and found some significant differences: (more…)

Xerox has released its sixth Global Citizenship Report which highlights how the company’s continued innovation supports the triple bottom line, commonly referred to as “people, planet and profits.”

For example, Xerox says it leverages the power of technology to help customers reduce their carbon footprint.  The company offers:

• managed print services which can cut paper use through digital imaging, archiving and indexing.
• solid ink technology which generates less waste.

Xerox also: (more…)

Over the past few years, I have used this blog to promote the message that businesses can do well by doing good. It’s a message that I’m passionate about, and in fact, I’ve been advocating for conservation and sustainability for well more than two decades now. I’ve worked with a variety of organizations, including World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, American Forests and Fundacion Natura, Ecuador’s leading conservation group, and in the early 1990s I also helped formulate corporate sustainability strategies for companies such as Eddie Bauer and Timberland.

Again and again, I’ve seen how sound CSR policy translates into solid business success, and that’s precisely why the title of Aneel Karnani’s recent Wall Street Journal article, The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility, caught my eye.

In sum, Karnani’s basic premise is that CSR efforts are either irrelevant or ineffective. “The idea that companies have a responsibility to act in the public interest and will profit from doing so is fundamentally flawed,” he writes . . .

. . . and I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that I whole-heartedly disagree. (more…)

Here’s the good news: Nearly half (47 percent) of the 500 senior executives who participated in a recent survey said they plan to invest up to 50 percent more to make their businesses more sustainable over the next decade.

However, that one finding only tells part of the story. (more…)

As I pointed out last week, many companies around the world are now developing strong, comprehensive corporate social responsibility programs.

But, have you ever wondered how these programs impact employee attitudes? What role, if any, do CSR initiatives play in, say, job retention and turnover?

Researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) explored questions like those during their 2008-2009 World Leadership Study. They sampled the opinions of 2,215 workers around the globe and found that, as you might expect, perceptions of CSR do, indeed, make a unique and positive contribution to overall employee commitment and that a strong CSR program can positively impact employees’ perceptions and how they represent the company to customers and other stakeholders.

Specifically, data in the study showed that: (more…)