2Sustain

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…)

It’s becoming increasingly commonplace for companies to present environmental information on their websites, but most can do better on data substance and timeliness, according to new research from AltaTerra Research.

The new report, “Greening the Company Website: A New Era in Sustainability Reporting,” details the results from a study of the websites of 60 recognized corporate sustainability leaders, representing 13 different industries.

Here are a few findings that caught my eye: (more…)

Earlier this week, Ford Motor Company released its tenth annual sustainability report. The 2008/9 report, “Blueprint for Sustainability: Our Future Works,” contains detailed updates about the company’s progress in key areas of climate change, fuel economy, mobility, vehicle safety, and human rights.

(more…)