How organizations are addressing the 'G' in ESG – striking the balance of maximizing long-term growth and value while safeguarding the interests of all stakeholders
This is an excerpt of a chapter from the newly released book, 21st-Century Corporate Citizenship (Emerald Insight, 2017), by Dave Stangis, Chief Sustainability Officer and VP of Corporate Responsibility at Campbell Soup Company; and Katherine Valvoda Smith, executive director of the Center for Corporate Citizenship Carroll School of Management at Boston College.
Community initiatives constitute a crucial component of the transformation taking place in Detroit, which has seen its fair share of difficulties following deindustrialization. And the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MUFI) is one of them.
The textile and apparel industries are widely known to have considerable environmental and social impacts on both local and global levels. The leather industry is no exception — in India, approximately 2.5 million workers are exposed to poor working conditions that violate their human rights and negatively affect their health.
Today’s employees want more from their employer than a paycheque. They crave a sense of pride and fulfillment and want to work for a company whose values match their own. A recent UK report found that companies with a social mission have a significant competitive advantage when attracting and retaining employees.
Tackling food waste continues to be a top priority for the food industry and local governments, and two new initiatives in the UK and Canada present important opportunities to reduce environmental impacts while improving public health.
Some leaders make change look easy. While most people strive to drive change through persuasion, they stoke our imaginations and inspire us to embrace daring new visions of what could be. How do they do it? A breakthrough from the behavioral sciences called the Voice Code has answered this question, offering us profound new insights into the invisible levers of influence. These insights have now been made actionable through the LUCK cycle, the following four-step engagement sequence:
Over the last few years, we’ve seen consumer demand accelerate the push for corporate responsibility in business. Consumers today aren’t just paying lip service to good causes; more are choosing to ‘vote with their dollars,’ seeking out and purchasing products from companies that align with their values.
Some leaders make change look easy. While most people strive to drive change through persuasion, they stoke our imaginations and inspire us to embrace daring new visions of what could be. How do they do it? Believe it or not, a breakthrough from the behavioral sciences called the Voice Code has finally answered this question, offering us profound new insights into the invisible levers of influence. These insights have now been made actionable through the LUCK cycle, the following four-step engagement sequence:
The changing of the guard at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has prompted the withdrawal of a request for owners and operators in the oil and gas industry to provide information on equipment and emissions at existing oil and gas operations. The withdrawal is effective immediately, meaning owners and operators — including those who have received an extension to their due dates for providing the information — are no longer required to respond.
You could say she’s unconventional. You could say she’s ambitious – her first job was an administrative assistant to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. But you can’t say she’s in it for herself – her proudest professional achievement is that of the individuals on her team. But who inspires Bea Perez – Coca–Cola’s Chief Sustainability Officer and SVP of Global Assets, Partnerships, Innovation, Licensing, Retail & Attractions – and what are her values?
Can new information incite change? Deloitte is hoping so. The firm is focusing on diversity in corporate boardrooms, with the intent of helping executives understand just how important it is to include women and minorities in the boardroom picture. As part of the Alliance for Board Diversity, one of Deloitte’s aims is to increase board diversity to 40 percent representation from women and minorities, combined, by 2020. At the current rate, it looks like that won’t happen until 2026.
London’s Heathrow Airport has unveiled a new sustainability leadership strategy designed to make Heathrow a center of excellence in the aviation industry. The strategy announces ambitious goals to reduce the airport’s and the industry’s environmental impacts while maximizing economic opportunities throughout the UK. Plans include a new R&D incubator, an ambition for growth from a new runway to be carbon neutral and at least halving the number of late-running departures to reduce noise for local communities.
The Olympic Games offer an opportunity for the world to come together on peaceful terms and helps generate a sense of comradery among the global community. But it’s not only the athletes and spectators who feel the Games’ impact — the environment does too. An event of such scale can have significant implications for the natural landscape and careful environmental management and sustainability strategies are essential in order to lessen negative impacts.
If there existed any question about the effectiveness of boycotts, recent actions taken across the retail industry by both consumers and brands should remove any doubt. The performance of Ivanka Trump’s fashion line plummeted as her father’s presidential campaign gained momentum, leading major retailers such as Nordstrom to pull the plug on her products not long after his inauguration.
Daniel Lubetzky, founder and CEO of KIND Healthy Snacks, has launched an independent organization that seeks to improve public health by making truth, transparency and integrity the foremost values in today’s food system.
Today, Heineken N.V. released its 2016 Annual Report, marking the first time the company has combined its annual and sustainability report into one document.
Just days after WWF and ISEAL released a new report highlighting the importance of aligning sustainability standards with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), tea brand Twinings announced a new framework designed to improve the lives of tea workers in its supply chain.
Change is one of the most challenging elements of life within an organization. To sustain a change agenda moving away from behaviors and decisions that are life-destroying to becoming life-enhancing, the nuances of both corporate culture and the patterns of human behavior need to be understood. This requires systems thinking - also called visual seeing and thinking skills. I sat down with Fritjof Capra, one of the world’s most distinguished scientists and systems theorists, to discuss the implications of systems thinking for business, leadership and society.
The Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) has launched a new Future Scenarios Toolkit in an effort to provide informed future planning guidance. The toolkit offers companies a clear and robust framework to analyze potential future scenarios regarding impacts (social, environmental, governmental, etc.) to their business, their supply chain, and their production, as well as successfully prepare to tackle those scenarios.