All Posts Tagged With: "corporate citizenship"
Planning for 2035
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), which is the statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, reported today that world energy consumption is expected to increase by nearly 50% by 2035. Asia in general and China and India in particular will account for most of the increase. Together, they accounted for 20% of total world energy consumption in 2007. Their combined energy use more than doubles by 2035 while world energy consumption by the U.S. would decline from 21% in 2007 to 16% in 2035, although actual consumption would increase.
Where is that energy going to come from? Who will control the sources? How much will it cost? How will it affect your organization? How will it affect consumer needs, governments, healthcare, and education? Since the increase will be steady for the next 25 years, the impact will be felt along the way and not just in 2035. Your strategic planning process should consider that impact.
Of course, any increase in energy usage means an increase in carbon dioxide emissions, which is a key cause of global warming. The EIA predicts such emissions will jump by 43%.
How will global warming affect your organization? How will it affect your customers, employees, and…
26May2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedAnother Case of Corporate Irresponsibility
How can a major oil company that is drawing oil from a mile below the water’s surface not plan for a disastrous oil spill? They never thought it would happen. BP’s own documents said that the likelihood of such an accident occurring was “virtually impossible.” And since it was virtually impossible, BP decided to save a half-million dollars on a remote-control shutoff valve that two oil-producing countries, Brazil and Norway, require—a valve that would have stopped the spill that is inexorably creeping toward the Gulf coast.
As if that wasn’t enough, BP fought efforts to change the voluntary self-regulation laws. The oil industry opposed mandates for the remote-control shutoff switch. And BP has a history of environmental and safety violations and fines including a criminal violation of the Clean Water Act on the North Slope ($20 million fine), a leaky pipeline in Alaska ($20 million fine), and the largest OSHA fine in history for failing to correct safety problems at its Texas City, Texas, refinery ($87 million). Only a company that is making obscene profits can risk ignoring environmental and safety problems that could incur multimillion-dollar penalties.
In the Leadership category of the Baldrige Criteria, these questions are asked:
- How do you consider…
Baldrige for the 20-Teens
Gill Corkindale is an executive coach and writer based in London. She recently wrote an article about Baldrige for the Harvard Business Review entitled “A Better Decade for Business is Coming” (December 31, 2009). And she wrote it without using the word “Baldrige” once!
Corkindale lists four things business leaders can do to correct the negative perception of business built during the past decade (Enron’s collapse, dotcom bust, Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, irresponsibility of the banking sector, global recession, declining wages—unless you’re an executive, etc.). Her four recommendations are:
- Examine your organization systematically. “What is really going on?” she writes. “What needs to be improved?” In other words, conduct a Baldrige assessment to answer these questions and systematically improve your organization.
- Build a new dialogue for business. Leaders must make ethical behavior, accountability, sustainability, longer-term focus, and community awareness part of the business agenda. Once again, a Baldrige assessment will help you understand how to make these issues part of your agenda and how well you do it.
- Engage people to make the best possible contribution to the business and wider society. “This means sharing power, information, responsibility, and, of course, rewards,” writes Corkindale. Workforce engagement, a key element of the Baldrige model, considers how you share…
The Most and Least Ethical Companies
According to Covalence, a Swiss research firm, Monsanto is the least ethical multinational corporation in the world. Covalence used quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate 581 companies over a seven-year period. Criteria included labor standards, waste management, and human rights records.
The top-ranked companies were IBM, Intel, and HSBC. Rounding out the top ten were Marks & Spencer, Unilever, Xerox, General Electric, Cisco Systems, Dell, and Procter & Gamble.
The worst were:
- Monsanto Co. This is the same corporation that Forbes named America’s Best Company in December. Apparently, ethics wasn’t part of the equation.
- Halliburton Company. Dick Cheney’s legacy lives on in both the business and political worlds.
- Chevron Corp.
- Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.
- Philip Morris International Inc.
- Occidental Petroleum Corporation
- Ryanair Holdings plc
- Syngenta AG
- Grupo Mexico SA de CV
- Total SA
The companies on this list may survive in the short term because of their economic success, but sustaining that success is another matter. As Adam Werbach, former Sierra Club president, wrote, true sustainability has four equal parts: economic, social, environmental, and cultural (click here). It’s hard to imagine any corporation standing for long on one of those legs, no matter how strong it is.
To read more about corporate social responsibility, click on these articles:
3Feb2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedNew Study of Corporate Citizenship
A new study by the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship found that two-thirds of company leaders believe ethical and values-based leadership in the executive office is an important factor in difficult economic times. Leaders also cited effective corporate governance practices (61%) and more effective industry self-regulatory policies and initiatives (58%) as important factors.
All three of these factors are addressed in the second half of the Leadership Category in the Baldrige Criteria. Companies that want to improve in these areas can ask and answer the questions in Item 1.2 (here) and read how Baldrige Award winners respond (award application summaries here).
The study shows that more companies are doing more than just talking about corporate citizenship. Forty percent of the respondents assign a team or individual to work on corporate citizenship issues, up from 26% in 2007. More companies are setting policies for corporate citizenship and integrating it with their business planning processes.
The study also found that more large companies are “establishing corporate citizenship management policies and practices to ensure citizenship is integrated into the core business.”
As the study concludes: “Increasingly, customers, employees, business partners, and government demand that corporations take an active role in social, environmental, and community concerns. That’s why…
19Oct2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
