CorporateResponsibility.Net

If a company can educate/influence their stakeholders a lot can be gained in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This is a good post on this topic.

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If you’ve ever ordered a Coke only to settle for a Pepsi or made a “Xerox” on a Canon copier, then you’ve experienced product commoditization.

From colas to copiers, some products become so familiar to us that we can barely distinguish among brands. To differentiate their commoditized products in the marketplace, brands often emphasize values and image over product specifications — Coke “shares happiness;” Apple offers “old nerd” vs. “geek cool.”

Many clean-tech companies can only dream of seeing their products achieve such levels of ubiquity. But to get off the ground, many cutting-edge green start-ups must first engage in an educational campaign to bring their audiences up to speed on the technology, before they start selling their brand.

Read the complete article here:

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=124390

A new report has suggested that global leaders in sustainability are failing to make the most of the potential of the web for their CSR reporting and general communications. It names ENI as the global leader that does the best. Many points are criticised across the board for not being up to scratch.

There’s no doubt that the essence of the message is true. Companies are not yet making the most of the medium. That fact is probably not only applicable to their CSR comms, but their overall use of the web. The state of the art is still evolving, after all.

But in some of the details, I think the report is misleading, and it bears further examination.

Let’s start with some points of agreement. Lundquist, the authors of the report, have made a number of assumptions that I would generally endorse.

Read the complete article post here:

http://www.mallenbaker.net/csr/page.php?Story_ID=2548

Companies who are socially and environmentally responsible can claim a major competitive advantage but they need to communicate their activities to Irish consumers, according to a new survey by Business in the Community Ireland.

The 2009 Survey of Consumer Attitudes in Ireland towards Corporate Responsibility was commissioned by Business in the Community Ireland in conjunction with Ipsos MORI and it is the third such survey in the past decade, with previous versions taking place in 2003 and 2006.

When forming a decision to buy a product or service, 8 out of 10 people in Ireland say that an organisation’s commitment to social and environmental responsibility is important. Yet almost eighty percent (80%) of consumers could not name one company which treat staff well, give good customer service and are mindful of its impact on the environment.

In addition, whilst ninety-two percent (92%) of consumers are taking individual actions to limit their own environment impacts, three out of four people (75%) could not name a company doing the same. Read more (BITCI)

Source: CSR Europe

The European Commission last week called on the IT industry to step up efforts to cut emissions, announcing plans for a wide-ranging green IT strategy designed to ensure economy-wide emission reductions of 15 per cent by 2020.

Announcing the new strategy, which is to be formally adopted in the second half of this year, commissioner for information society and media Viviane Reding said that while the IT sector had already made significant commitments to reduce its environmental impact, it still had “enormous untapped potential for saving energy right across the economy”.

“I would recommend to the IT sector to show the way for the rest of the economy by reducing its own carbon footprint by 20 per cent by 2015,” she said. “I see from the response of European IT companies to the Commission’s ongoing work that Europe is already well ahead in using IT for greening the economy.” Read more

Source: Business Green

Far from being a drag on the global economy, complying with stringent emission reduction targets designed to limit global warming to two degrees above pre-industrial levels could in fact provide a boost to GDP.

That is the conclusion of a new economic model from researchers at the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, which predicts the transition to more efficient technologies will lead to net increases in global GDP.

Speaking at the Climate Congress in Copenhagen, Dr Terry Barker, who led the research, said that previous estimates that meeting the two degree target set out by the EU would lead to a contraction of GDP of between one and three per cent were based on a number of flawed assumptions. Read more

Source: Business Green

The economic recession is delaying some sustainability-related corporate spending, according to a new survey from Booz & Co., but other signs still point to the continuing focus on sustainability in the manufacturing sector, Manufacturing Business Technology reports.

Booz & Co., a global management consulting firm, surveyed 828 senior managers in December 2008 about their confidence in leadership moves in the face of the current economic crisis.

One survey finding revealed 40 percent of respondents expect green and other corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to significantly slow due to the downturn. However, close to a third of companies surveyed (29 percent) don’t think the economic crisis will delay CSR projects. Read more (Manufacturing Business Technology)

Source: CSR Europe

In spite of the recession, the Fairtrade movement made another step towards the mainstream with an announcement by Cadbury that it is to certify its biggest selling brand, Dairy Milk, as Fairtrade in Britain and Ireland.

The move will, at a stroke, double the amount of cocoa bought under the Fairtrade banner, and is reminiscent of Nestle’s move to create a mainstream Fairtrade coffee several years ago. The key difference is that whereas Nestle created a new brand, Partners Blend, to carry the Fairtrade banner, Cadbury is mainstreaming its commitment to paying higher prices to producers within its best-selling standard product range. Read more

Source: Business Respect

AstraZeneca tried to “bury” adverse medical studies about Seroquel, its blockbuster drug, internal company memos released in an American court case have revealed.

The Anglo-Swedish drugs group is being sued by a total of 9,200 patients, most of whom allege that the Seroquel treatment for psychiatric disorders gave them diabetes. As part of a class-action case before a federal court in Florida, AstraZeneca released 102 documents, including an e-mail in which a member of staff praised a colleague for doing a “great smoke and mirrors job” on company research known as “study 15”, which found that Haldol, a cheaper generic rival, was more effective than Seroquel. Read more

Source: The Times

Nearly two-thirds of informed publics (62%) trust corporations less than they did a year ago, according to the 10th Edelman Trust Barometer. When respondents in the United States were asked about trust in business in general, only 38% said they trust business to do what is right – a 20 percent plunge since last year – and only 17% said they trust information from a company’s CEO. Both are lower levels of trust than those Edelman measured in the wakes of Enron, the dot-com bust, and Sept.11.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) said they refused to buy products or services from a company they distrusted – the first time the survey explored people’s direct actions toward trusted and distrusted companies. Seventy-two percent (72%) criticized a distrusted company to a friend or colleague. Read more

Source: Edelman

Companies considering scaling back their sustainability initiatives in response to the economic downturn have today been urged to “think twice” after research released yesterday by consultancy giant AT Kearney showed that those businesses with the most effective green strategies tend to outperform their rivals financially.

The new study, entitled Green Winners: The Performance of Sustainability-focused Companies in the Financial Crisis, looked at 99 companies that feature on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the Goldman Sachs SUSTAIN focus list of green companies, and assessed their stock price performance over the six months up to November last year. Read more

Source: Business Green