Worldfavor. Life and Times of Corporate Reporting - simon zadek. “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad”, argued the president of the bank advising Henry Ford not to invest in such new fangled nonsense. The media, predictably myopic, argued similarly when The Body Shop International published its Values Report in early 1996, the world’s first, externally audited, sustainability report by a publicly listed company. So started my reflection on the short history and (hopefully) long and productive future of corporate sustainability reporting, published by the Centre for Corporate Governance in Africa along with UNEP and other friends in a report entitled Making Investment Grade: the Future of Corporate Reporting, just launched at Rio+20.
Edited by ex-UNEP Cornis van der Lugt and South Africa-based Daniel Malan, the volume is full of goodies for those interested in the life and times of corporate sustainability reporting. My short piece is continued below. Sign-up to future updates from me right here. 2012 Global 100: The Definitive Corporate Sustainability Benchmark. 100 Time-Saving Search Engines for Serious Scholars. While burying yourself in the stacks at the library is one way to get some serious research done, with today’s technology you can do quite a bit of useful searching before you ever set foot inside a library.
Undergraduates and grad students alike will appreciate the usefulness of these search engines that allow them to find books, journal articles and even primary source material for whatever kind of research they’re working on and that return only serious, academic results so time isn’t wasted on unprofessional resources. Note: Visit our updated list for the latest in academic search engines. General Start off your research with one of these more general academic search engines. Intute: Use this website’s search tools to find the best and most reliable sites to start your research. Meta Search Want to search it all at once? Dogpile: Search Google, Yahoo, Bing and more at once with this great search engine. Databases and Archives Books and Journals Science Math and Technology Social Science. 4 Ways To Create Brand Content People Actually Care About. What if Environmentalism Were as Big as Social Media? [INFOGRAPHIC] What if everyone across the globe used his or her social media influence to help the planet?
The impact would be huge, according to a recent infographic from Recyclebank, a company that rewards green consumers with discounts and deals from local and national businesses. The data encourages the connected generation to use social networks and technology for a positive effect on the earth. For example, if each Pinterest user shared one green idea per month, there would be 12 million more environmentally-conscious tips being passed around. The efforts can be carried offline, too. According to Recyclebank, if everyone on Facebook shortened his or her shower by one minute, we would save enough water to fill 1,136,364 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
What relationship do you see between social media and helping the planet? What can you do to make an impact? Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Olena_T. Sustainability Nears a Tipping Point. This year, most survey respondents say sustainability is on their companies’ management agendas to stay. What’s more, a substantial portion of respondents say their companies are profiting from sustainability activities. Introduction The Sustainability Movement Nears a Tipping PointMost Managers Believe a Sustainability Strategy is a Competitive NecessityEmbracers vs. Harvesters Section I: Sustainability Is Firmly on Managers’ Agendas Companies Are Upping Their Sustainability CommitmentsResource-Intensive Industries Lead the WayExternal and Internal Drivers of Sustainable Business Practices Section II: Ahead of the Game: The Leaders in Sustainability Emerging Markets Have a Strong Commitment to SustainabilityEurope Seen as Sustainability Leader Section III: A New Cohort: Harvesters Come into Focus Harvesters Have Strong Organizational SupportHarvesters Link Sustainability and Performance Section IV: Lessons from the Harvesters Sustainable Practices Improve Collaboration Conclusion: Looking Ahead.
Sustainability Report Gets White House Attention. Topics Sustainability Leading Sustainable Organizations Corporate adoption of sustainable business practices is essential to a strong market environment and an enduring society. What does it mean to become a sustainable business and what steps must leaders take to integrate sustainability into their organization?
More in this series Already a member? Sign in Not a member? Sign up today Member Free 5 free articles per month, $6.95/article thereafter, free newsletter. Subscribe $75/Year Unlimited digital content, quarterly magazine, free newsletter, entire archive. Sign me up The MIT SMR – BCG 2012 Sustainability and Innovation research report “Sustainability Nears a Tipping Point” prompted an invitation to participate in a White House Sustainable Supply Chain Dialogue on March 30 in Washington, DC. Organized by the U.S. Focused on how to create a community of practice, the afternoon gathering was a free-wheeling open discussion, followed by a dinner to enable participants to get to know one another. Sustainability | Disclosure of Long-Term Business Value: What matters? CSES | Center för socialt entreprenörskap. De påverkar företagens hållbarhetsarbete mest under 2012.
Formell makt är ett trubbigt och inte särskilt rättvisande mått på vilka som påverkar i samhället. I vår omfattande kartläggning av hundratals mer eller mindre kända personer i Hållbarhetssverige från såväl den privata, offentliga och den civila sektorn. Vi har därefter rankat dem utifrån deras förmåga att påverka företagens hållbarhetsarbete under 2012. För mer information om metoden vi använt, se faktarutan till höger. De 100 främsta påverkarna 2012 De största påverkarna i varje sektor För att försäkra dig om att inte missa när namnen på påverkarna publiceras, teckna en prenumereration på vårt gratis nyhetsbrev. Remarks to "KPMG Summit: Business Perspective For Sustainable Growth"
Mr. Michael Andrew, [Chairman of KPMG International,] Mr. John Veihmeyer, [Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of KPMG in the United States,] Mr. Yvo de Boer, [KPMG Special Global Advisor on Climate Change and Sustainability] Distinguished business leaders, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure and honour to address such a distinguished group of business community leaders. The private sector is a key partner for the United Nations. We are long past the era in which business and the United Nations eyed each other with suspicion. As businessmen and businesswomen who have embraced sustainability, you in this audience are leaders in thought, and leaders in action. I am not here to preach to the converted. I am here to ask you to do more, you have been giving great support to the international community.
We are at a critical juncture – economically, socially and environmentally. More than one billion people lack access to food, electricity or safe drinking water. Thank you. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) - Sustainable and responsible business - Enterprise and Industry. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to companies taking responsibility for their impact on society. As evidence suggests, CSR is increasingly important to the competitiveness of enterprises. It can bring benefits in terms of risk management, cost savings, access to capital, customer relationships, human resource management, and innovation capacity. European Commission Strategy CSR is defined by the European Commission as "the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society" (COM (2011) 681 ). The Commission’s CSR agenda for action is: A detailed table showing progress in implementation of this agenda is available here.
Acona.co.uk/reports/Multiple Messages.pdf. The future of sustainability reporting will be plural, bespoke and continuous | Guardian Sustainable Business. It is universally agreed that large companies should somehow report on non-financial matters: last year more than 3,000 did so by means of a corporate responsibility (CR) or sustainable development (SD) report. But ask the questions "why? " and "how? " and things become less clear. Are they intended to tell shareholders about the fuzzier types of risk that lie over the horizon? Or should they be an honest disclosure to civil society of the company's global footprint? The answer – for most companies, at least – is all of the above. The practice of SD reporting may be widespread, but discussion with users or even those who write them suggests that it has not yet evolved to its final state. Acona has undertaken a careful review, sponsored by global brewer SABMiller, aiming to understand how the best companies will report on SD in ten years time.
Or so went the theory. But the big story lies elsewhere. Can the Global Reporting Initiative help restore faith in the media | Sustainability. As if the advent of 'Generation We-Want-It-All-For-Free' and the rise of social media were not challenging enough, recent events mean that media organisations undoubtedly face an uphill struggle in the years to come. Business models under pressure and public distrust towards mediacontent are coming soon to a boardroom near you. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) recently launched its final draft of the Media Sector Supplement, a set of indicators and questions aimed at measuring, in as much detail as possible, the social, environmental and financial impacts of media companies on society.
The idea is that mediacompanies will become better 'corporate citizens' as the tools for holding them accountable become more refined and allow for comparisons across borders. As a mechanism for promoting integrity and accountability, GRI's project is both worthwhile and timely. Total volume and number of significant spills;Location and size of land owned in [...] areas of high biodiversity. Stock Values Rise When Companies Disclose "Green" Information, UC Davis Graduate School of Management Study Finds. The Future of Sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ Users of social networks are getting tired of sharing — but that doesn't mean sharing is on the decline. A new study analyzes sharing behaviors on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and makes predictions for the future of sharing. Digital agency Beyond released the study for Social Media Week, along with the below infographic. Beyond makes six predictions about where sharing is headed based on the responses of 2,000 social media users in the U.S. and UK, between ages 16 and 40, who are active on either Twitter, Facebook or Google+.
Among those users, 98% were active on Facebook, 60% of whom log in several times daily. First, sharing to selective lists — the Google+ Circles model — is on the rise. While only 40% of social media users have grouped their friends and followers into lists, the concept appeals to 62% of users. Second, frictionless sharing — Spotify songs shared to Facebook, for example — is on the rise. Third, discounts and giveaways will spur sharing of branded content. Setting the Standard for Corporate Responsibility and Sustainable Development - Top Five Misconceptions About GRI Reporting.
2012-02-16By Anna Ashbaugh, Associate, Advisory Services The Global Reporting Initiative’s sustainability reporting Guidelines (G3.1), while widely applied, are often misunderstood. With nearly 200 pages of guidance and detailed technical protocols, it is easy to lose sight of the purpose of reporting, which is to be accountable to stakeholders and drive performance. 1. A GRI “A” level means leadership. The “A” is part of the GRI Application Level system that indicates the extent to which the Guidelines have been applied in sustainability reporting.
All organizations are expected to assess what is relevant for them to report – a materiality assessment. 2. There are different methodologies for assuring data, and there are different levels of assurance. 3. Good reporting begins with conducting a materiality analysis to determine which topics are most important to address and which topics are of little or no concern for the company and its stakeholders. 4. 5. Putting GRI Reporting in Context. E-Learning : Think like an Editor. Today’s communications professionals have the ability to reach a global audience with a single Tweet. But so too to do your biggest rivals and critics. It very much is a published or be damned world we live in. In the always-on world of social media communication core editorial skills help brands build successful engagement with their target audiences and community giving them information that is useful, informative and entertaining.
This introductory editorial training workshop - split into four online modules - will teach communicators the basics of thinking like a social media editor including: Structure of the eLearning This workshop is comprised of the following modules. What You Get Out Of It This workshop is specially geared for PR, marketing and internal comms professionals with responsibility to run online and social media sites. About the Trainer The Think Like an Editor eLearning module is taught by veteran journalist and Social Media Influence co-founder Matthew Yeomans.
What BP could teach you about social media smarts. Home » Editor's Comment, Training An interesting new ranking arrived in my in-box Thursday morning grading the most social-savvy FTSE 100 companies. In the top 10 were plenty of brands you’d expect – Marks and Spencer, Burberry, Unilever and Intercontinental Hotels. Also making the cut was Big Oil. Improbably, both BP and Royal Dutch Shell had cracked the top 6 of the FTSE 100 Social Media Index. If you had told me a year ago that BP had cracked anybody’s list of socially committed brands, I’d have asked you how much petrol you’d been sniffing. To be sure, the Deepwater Horizon tragedy has forever changed BP’s corporate psyche. Learn from the digital pioneers, brands like Coca-Cola, Carnival Cruises, Whole Foods, Vodafone and scores of others. . - Bernhard Warner co-founder, SMI. Are companies on the button with their online sustainability programmes? | Guardian Sustainable Business.
In 2010, Pepsi created a lot of fizz in the advertising world by choosing to bypass the Super Bowl — the biggest event in the brand-marketing calendar. Instead it created an ongoing corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme, The Pepsi Refresh Project. This gained huge traction through social media and set a benchmark for how companies would communicate CSR and sustainability online. Two years later, arch-rival Coca-Cola also has set down a marker for CSR and sustainability communications through its Arctic Home collaboration with WWF. For the past three months, Coke has been running multiplatform awareness programmes to raise money for a new wildlife sanctuary in the northernmost Arctic region that will help ensure the survival of the polar bears.
Coke has pledged to donate up to $3m (£1.8m) to the cause. The Polar Bowl generated a good deal of online interest: more than 600,000 people watched the animated bears' live stream while the game was on. Just ask Chrysler. Corporate Responsibility + Social Media - Are They Aligned in Your Organization. CSR & Sustainability in 2012: 5 Trends. 50 Fastest Growing Brands Serve a ‘Higher Purpose’ How ‘good’ does a shampoo need to be? Describing CSR has five components. From MDG to SDG, with help of ICT: Sachs shows the way.
What's Your Scale For Good?