June 2011
31 posts
6 tags
CSR Summer Reading Picks
A crop of new and recent books will improve your sustainability IQ while you soak up the sun at the beach.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By CSRwire Talkback Managing Editor Francesca Rheannon
Memorial Day has come and gone and the summer season is upon us (even if it’s still formally a few weeks away). The crises in the economy and environment continue to amplify in the...
May 2011
27 posts
9 tags
But What About My 401(k)?
What would happen if Wall Street went away?
As part of the New Economy 2.0 series
By David Korten
The first reaction of most people to the call to shut down Wall Street is one of jubilant enthusiasm. The second reaction is, “But what about my 401(k) retirement account?” The same question might be raised about our credit cards, mortgages, and medical, homeowners and auto insurance.
Money may be...
9 tags
The Corporate Electioneering Debate: Should...
Support is growing to give shareholders the right to vote on corporate political spending.
By Sanford Lewis, Attorney
In response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, which expanded the opportunity of corporate treasuries to be used in electoral fights, diverse responses by the shareholder community have emerged. With company managers beginning to...
11 tags
The Rise of Cause Integration
Integrating cause into a company’s corporate culture is good for business.
By Reena De Asis
For innovative businesses to create a sustainable impact, long gone are the days of just slapping a ribbon on a product for a “cause” or writing an occasional check for one’s nonprofit of choice. Cause, now, goes much deeper than marketing.
Ryan Scott, founder and CEO of Causecast, in his most...
2 tags
China's Other Looming Choke Point: Food Production
Yellow River Basin is center of contest over water, energy and agriculture.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By Keith Schneider, Circle of Blue
Even along the eastern bank of the Yellow River, which irrigates 402,000 hectares (993,000 acres) of farmland north of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region’s provincial capital, there is still no mistaking the smell of dry earth and diesel...
9 tags
New Styles of Courage
Investors are collaborating with companies to create positive change.
By David Wilcox
Sometimes I am overwhelmed with admiration for those who have faced danger and summoned the courage to step forward and act. It is easy to see them as different from the rest of us. But some recent experiences have shifted my focus to what we have in common with that class of courageous heroes. No matter where...
8 tags
The Corporate Social Irresponsibility of The...
“This country was built by unpaid interns. And in exchange, I assume they got college credit.” - Stephen Colbert
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By CSRwire Talkback Managing Editor Francesca Rheannon
All over the U.S. - and abroad - college students are packing up their belongings, vacating student digs and heading out in droves to fill thousands of summer internships....
7 tags
Shut Down the Con
The Wall Street economy is playing investors for patsies.
As part of the New Economy 2.0 series
By David Korten
Wikipedia defines a “confidence trick” as “an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. The victim is known as the mark, the trickster is called a confidence man, con man, confidence trickster, or con artist, and any accomplices are known as shills. Confidence...
7 tags
Climate Change, One Pepper At a Time
Ethnobotonist Gary Paul Nabhan is following food resilience in the desert Southwest.
By Aaron Kagan
Gary Paul Nabhan wears many hats, but when we recently spoke in his hometown of Patagonia, Arizona, he had on a khaki ball cap emblazoned with a caricature of a horned toad.
An ethnobotanist by trade, Nabhan is an enthusiastic desert dweller and a research scientist at the Southwest Center at the...
7 tags
Building Buffalo From The Bottom Up
A nonprofit engages businesses and residents to create a sustainable community.
By Sally Kohn
By every measure, Buffalo, New York, is one of the poorest cities in the United States. In 2009, 28.8% of families in Buffalo lived below the official poverty line—meaning literally one in four people in Buffalo is desperately poor (since the official poverty line is set obscenely low) while at least as...
8 tags
Recreating Our Economy: The Untapped Power of...
Democratic enterprises that build community prosperity are gaining ground.
By Jeffrey Hollender
We have before us an incredible opportunity to transform our economy. The disastrous turn our fiscal health took in 2008 has forced us to really think about the way our country creates and distributes wealth. One positive outcome of the recession is a zeal and enthusiasm around the idea of community...
8 tags
The Sustainable CEO Blueprint
We need more phenomenal CEOs.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By CSRwire Contributing Writer Elaine Cohen
Some women manage to do it all and succeed at all they do, despite those who say it’s not possible. “Turning down the noise of negativity” is the clue to great achievement. This is a lesson more CEOs could do well to learn when advancing and embedding...
8 tags
Seven Interventions
Top seven failings of the old economy and their new economy solutions.
As part of the New Economy 2.0 series
By David Korten
The Old Economy fails us because it concentrates power in unaccountable corporations and financial markets that value money more than life. Here are seven critical sources of Old Economy failure—each paired with its New Economy solution.
1. Problem: Financial...
6 tags
Shapeshifting Business Leadership
Rights without responsibilities lead corporations to false profits.
By John Perkins
We live in a time of extraordinary transformation. From climate change around the planet to regime change in the Middle East, from radioactive contamination in Japan to the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan – we are experiencing global events that will impact our world for years to come. And today, like never...
5 tags
Ceres Conference 2011: The world can no longer...
Business as usual, the old economy, single bottom line capitalism - these are terms, practices and policies Ceres would like to put behind us. But how?
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
At the Ceres Conference 2011, my eyes were opened to a slew of different approaches to combat the world’s most pressing challenges. From securing efficient energy systems to promoting...
6 tags
Boardroom Diversity Means Better Business
Boardroom diversity is about more than affirmative action.
By Lucy P. Marcus
I recently gave a Q&A interview to Liftstream on the benefits of not only more women in the boardroom, but also the need for far more diverse representation in the boardroom, and indeed in business more generally. To me the benefits of diversity in the boardroom are obvious, be it in a public or private company, or...
7 tags
CEO-Worker Pay Ratio Rule Under Attack
A bill in Congress threatens to throw a veil over critical information on CEO pay.
By Sarah Anderson
The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill mandates that public companies disclose the ratio of total compensation of the CEO to that of the median of all their employees.
Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) has introduced a bill to repeal this disclosure rule before the Securities and Exchange Commission can...
An Earth-Friendly Jurisprudence
Advocates for the Earth are dusting off old legal concepts and developing new ones to bring the fight to save the environment to the courts.
By CSRwire Contributing Writer Francesca Rheannon
When my son was sixteen years old, he said to me in a voice filled with despair, “I hope the Earth will still be liveable when I am forty.” The pathos of his comment struck me dumb. What...
10 tags
Making a Living
It’s not about scarcity; it’s about choices.
As part of the New Economy 2.0 series
By David Korten
In a world rushing toward environmental and social collapse, there is no place for war, speculation, auto dependent sprawl, toxic contamination and wasteful consumption – activities that generate a major portion current GDP. This massive misallocation of resources is an artifact of a mistaken...
7 tags
How Can the US Unite to Address & Resolve Issues?
Government investment made the US great – and can do it again.
By Hank Boerner
In our fractious and contentious public policy debates – where the nation is almost equally divided pro and con on many issues – how can we agree on solutions or at least the basic questions to unite and move forward to preserve our quality of life and build on the great legacies of generations past? These are not...
8 tags
Transforming Finance
A financial transactions tax is a sensible idea whose time has come.
As part of the Green Economy series
By Hazel Henderson
In 2010, we at Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil) released a statement from the meeting of financial experts we convened on Transforming Finance. We worried the Dodd-Frank Bill – now made law – would do little to prevent another financial collapse. We were concerned...
7 tags
The death of Osama Bin Laden—what implications for...
Should a sense of security or fear follow in the wake Bin Laden’s death?
By Stefan Wolff
Now that the dust has somewhat settled after the initial euphoria, triumphalism, gloating and relief that followed Barack Obama’s announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden, more sober analysis is beginning of the broader implications of the end of a 15-year manhunt.
Perhaps foremost on people’s...
8 tags
Off the Deep End - Beijing's Water Demand Outpaces...
How China’s capital got in over its head, and what the city is doing to get its water crisis under control.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By Nadya Ivanova, Circle of Blue
Perennial drought, overuse and pollution have left Beijing struggling to meet the growing water demands of its soaring economy, which is expanding by more than 11 percent per year on average. Its drying...
7 tags
CSD-19: Can developed and developing countries...
With multi-stakeholder dialogue on CSD-19 and Rio+20 continuing, will a bridge be crossed?
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By CSRwire Contributing Writer Martha Shaw
The 19th annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-19) opened with hopes countries will agree on policy decisions that will significantly improve the safe use of chemicals,...
8 tags
What's the Standard on Standards?
The fight between two forest products certification programs illustrates competing views of CSR.
Originally posted on the CSRwire website.
By CSRwire Talkback Managing Editor Francesca Rheannon
When it comes to judging a company’s environmental sustainability quotient, what’s more important: getting the buy-in of as many companies as possible, even if it means lowering the bar,...
6 tags
Design for Life
Can we design a self-correcting society?
As part of the New Economy 2.0 series
By David Korten
I’m sometimes called an economist because I write and speak about economic issues. The discipline for which I received my academic training, however, is organizational systems design. I view the economy through an institutional design lens.
As a Harvard Business School professor in the early 1970s, I...
13 tags
Should Ford Tilt to Windmills?
The U.S. could follow Ford’s example into a new energy future.
By John Elkington
Well done, Ford! The company that once said it could only make real profits on gas-guzzling SUVs has announced its smaller and fuel-efficient cars are helping it make money at a time of skyrocketing gas prices. But, if you believe Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, the sustainability journey has only just...
