A recent report by GlobeScan published some interesting findings – “significant numbers of survey respondents around the world cannot or will not name a single socially responsible company when asked, and this proportion appears to be rising in many countries.”
This is a worldwide phenomenon in both developing and developed countries. Large numbers of people can’t name a socially responsible company. In India for example it’s 57 percent, while in the U.S., it’s 39 percent. Read More
US founding father Benjamin Franklin once observed: “I believe that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.”
Franklin’s insight, predated by many years the creation of the joint stock, limited liability enterprise, the dominant form of the modern publicly listed corporation. But how prescient was he in relation to contemporary approaches to measuring corporate value, a field replete with Franklin’s “false estimates”? Asset owners and managers obsess over hourly, daily, and monthly swings in share price. Quarterly earnings reports rivet analysts. Investors track earnings per share to inform portfolio management. Short-term returns to finance capital rules the mind of the market, leaving little room for attention and reward to other capitals essential to prosperous business and societies. The electronic ticker-tape dashing across the bottom of computer monitors has become the icon of rampant short-termism and the fleeting metric of corporate value.
We are at least 10 years into the corporate sustainability journey now, so what really significant changes have we achieved?
Perhaps the business world has focused on the wrong tasks? Could it be that, despite all the carbon neutrality claims, hundreds of Global Reporting Initiative [GRI] A+ reports and sustainability teams of ten or more people, companies have still not radically redesigned their core products and business models?
I believe that there has been far too much focus on companies wanting to look good, and not nearly enough attention paid to actually performing well.
It seems like over the last few months just about everyone has put together a list about sustainability reporting. Common sustainability reporting mistakes, best sustainability reporting practices, misconceptions about the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines — the list goes on and on. We’ve compiled the best of those lists right here for easy reference. Enjoy!
Tim Faveri of Tim Hortons will be at TSSS on May 17, 2012 (live and via webcast) click here for more details
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Tim Hortons understands Corporate Social Responsibility. They are proud of their ‘Making a True DifferenceTM’ initiatives including Tim Horton Children’s Foundation, local programs such as Earn-a-Bike and Timbits Minor Sports, sponsorships of national sports leagues and local community programs, environmental events and their Coffee Partnership. They issue an annual Sustainability and Responsibility Report. Clearly, Tim Hortons knows how to talk the talk. But are they walking the walk of corporate social responsibility?
On June 12, 2013, join Dr. Volker Schaedler, VP of Innovation and Technology, to learn how the world’s leading chemical company focuses its innovation machine to solve some of society’s most pressing needs.
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