My newly adopted home state is on fire again: Scorching heat and lightning strikes have sparked dozens of fires across California, burning an area the size of Rhode Island. Iowa is reeling from a deadly derecho. The Mountain West is suffering through a severe drought. Towns and cities all over are experiencing one of
In recent years, sustainability has become a popular buzzword — but it still doesn’t always have a seat at the strategy table. Until that happens, benefits will not accrue to either firms or to society, says C. B. Bhattacharya, a professor of sustainability and ethics at the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University
In Deloitte’s 2018 study of global human capital trends, “The Rise of the Social Enterprise,” we interviewed many CEOs and found them often in a quandary about how to treat social issues. Ken Frazier, the CEO of Merck, told us he struggled to decide how to
John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Co. and as a result was the richest person on the planet when he died in 1937. Yet some of his 200-plus living descendants have embarked on a mission to challenge Standard Oil offspring Exxon Mobil Corp. on climate change.
So it should come as
Today we consume more than twice as much as our relatives did only 50 years ago. In the US, this means generating upwards of 500 billion pounds of garbage every year that’s trucked to one of our 10,000 landfills. This accelerated consumption is exhausting global ecosystems, depleting 30% of global resources and nearly 60% of animal populations since the
I’ve been a consultant for almost 20 years, advising companies on complex challenges in ethics, risk, and responsibility. Each year several clients raise the same issue: the need to get buy-in from a skeptical senior executive in order to demonstrate a concrete benefit that will follow a proposed investment in an ethical business initiative or function.
The $170 billion corporate empire has been trying to prove corporations can do well by doing good. It goes like this. Rub your left palm with your right hand, then clap, now right, clap, up, down, thumbs, knuckles, clap. Then repeat, scrubbing vigorously. The 200 or so children present on a muggy May morning, ages 8
Being socially conscious is no longer an option for the budding startups of the world. Making the world a better place is a necessity for any company looking to make an impact with their particularly innovation. But without an infrastructure in place to promote these startups, the world will continue to support the status quo.
In the more than 30 years that John Elkington has been advising companies about corporate responsibility, there’s been a lot of change in how people view the topic. Many companies now endorse the notion of triple bottom line—Elkington’s most famous idea. We have indexes of corporate behavior, as well as indexes of profit.
Today’s executives are dealing with a complex and unprecedented brew of social, environmental, market, and technological trends. These require sophisticated, sustainability-based management. Yet executives are often reluctant to place sustainability core to their company’s business strategy in the mistaken belief that the costs outweigh the benefits. On the contrary, academic research and business experience point
Coming soon: Business schools—once reserved for those who wanted to pursue careers as bankers, consultants, and CEOs—now boast a wealth of social entrepreneurship and social innovation courses. More and more students are seeking out these courses with a hope of creating high-impact future careers. This increase in demand for social impact courses leaves universities and
“A country that works for everyone.” A phrase that adorned the backdrop at the Conservative Party Conference this week. But how does the British government bring this sentiment into the heart of its policymaking?
For our country to work better for everyone, business needs to work better. We need to focus on creating a vibrant economy—one
Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus suggested that some part of development aid could be exclusively devoted to financing social business initiatives or sustainable enterprises that address social needs while unleashing the creative energies of communities.
The Bangladesh economist made the call in an hour-long meeting with Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau on Friday.
Yunus also attended a
Fifty Years (Facebook, Twitter) wants to tackle a few issues that seem to plague the relationship between entrepreneur, investor and the demands of capitalism.
While working as entrepreneurs themselves, the two had found it hard to find savvy investors that could both help them scale their businesses, but would also
Recently, I spoke with senior leaders at a Fortune 500 firm. It’s a leader in philanthropy, but the executives feel all their corporate giving goes unappreciated. “We do all the right things, but the public always criticizes us,” they told me. “What’s wrong?”
That’s something I hear more and more. The public has grown increasingly skeptical about the motivations
The Netherlands ambassador in Bangladesh has called upon the garment factory owners to take care of their workers health, even in the interest of “business profit”.
“These workers are your assets- working to their fullest capacity and potential in order to make your factory more profitable,” Leoni Margaretha Cuelenaere said on Thursday in Dhaka.
“But they are often misinformed