“… to change its corporate charter by requiring the Governance and Nominating Committee to report to the Board "with regards to matters of corporate responsibility and sustainability performance, including potential long and short term trends and impacts to our business of environmental, social and governance issues, including the company's public reporting on these topics."”In addition:
“Intel directed its outside legal counsel to "write a legal opinion specifically stating that pursuant to Delaware law, corporate responsibility and sustainability reporting based upon the committee's charter, was part of the fiduciary duty of company directors."”Of course, the value of these decisions will be determined by the firm’s actions. But, the decisions alone, together with this year’s SEC announcement, seem to mark an important, positive sea-change in the CSR debate.
Take care
David
Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Stakeholders in a Global Environment (2e)
© Sage Publications, 2011
http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr2e/
Instructor Teaching Site: http://www.sagepub.com/strategiccsr/
The library of CSR Newsletters are archived at: http://strategiccsr-sage.blogspot.com/
Intel Agrees to Board-Level Consideration of Sustainability
by Robert Kropp
Social Funds
April 05, 2010
http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/article2921.html
From: David Chandler {msbbe096}
Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010 9:56 AM
Subject: Strategic CSR - SEC
Over the weekend, I was reading the BusinessWeek article in the url below about socially responsible investing (Issues: Investing, p184). The article was interesting, but what really caught my eye was this paragraph:
“On Jan. 27 the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission approved a standard that requires public companies to weigh the impact of climate-change laws and regulations when deciding which information to disclose in corporate filings. The SEC said companies should also consider international accords, indirect effects such as reduced demand for goods tied to greenhouse gas production, and physical impacts such as the potential for increased insurance claims in coastal regions due to rising sea levels in their assessments.”This seems to be a pretty big deal to me. Yet, I read multiple newspapers a day and I haven’t seen any articles about this announcement. Did I miss it? If the SEC really is requiring publicly-traded firms to “weigh the impact of climate-change laws and regulations when deciding which information to disclose in corporate filings,” that has the potential to alter significantly both the degree and kind of information firms release. As such, I would think it has ramifications similar to those sought by the movement to require executives to consider stakeholders beyond their shareholders in making decisions (e.g., see http://www.c4cr.org/).
Did anyone catch this when it was announced and do you have any thoughts on whether this is potentially as important as I think it is?
Take care
David
Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
http://www.sagepub.com/Werther/
Social Investing Gathers Momentum
Niche no more: Socially responsible funds are putting up impressive performance numbers—and their reach is spreading
By David Bogoslaw
February 3, 2010
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2010/pi2010023_247094.htm
