2Sustain

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…)

I was invited to speak at the Forbes Ethisphere Conference in New York last week – an intimate “roundtable” style conference hosted by Steve Forbes and Forbes Magazine. The event was focused on business ethics, CSR and sustainability and attracted CEOs and senior executives from a wide array of companies ranging from Waste Management and Kelloggs to Pepsi and Mattel. I spoke about sustainable supply chains, and in particular the trends we’re witnessing around large enterprises using their leverage to enforce compliance, ethical and social responsibility standards upstream to their suppliers.

(more…)