Strategic CSR - Amazon

The article in the url below is an interview with Jeff Bezos of Amazon to complement his ‘appointment’ by Harvard Business Review as “the greatest living CEO.” The quotes below focus on his views on the importance of long-term thinking in his position:

“If you’re long-term oriented, customer interests and shareholder interests are aligned. … We take it as an article of faith that if we put customers first, other stakeholders will also benefit, as long as they’re willing to take the long-term view. And a long-term approach is essential for invention, because you’re going to have a lot of failures along the way.”

“… if we had always needed to see significant financial results in two or three years, then some of the most meaningful things we’ve done would never have been started—like Kindle, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Prime.”

“I do not follow the stock on a daily basis, because I don’t think there’s any information in it. The economist Benjamin Graham once said, ‘In the short term, the stock market is a voting machine. In the long term, it’s a weighing machine.’ We try to build a company that wants to be weighed, not voted on.”

Two thoughts—First, I love the Benjamin Graham quote; second, I thought the qualifier in the first quote, “as long as they’re willing to take the long-term view,” is revealing. It reinforces the view that corporate stakeholder responsibility is as important as corporate social responsibility (see Strategic CSR – Corporate Stakeholder Responsibility).

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/

The Best-Performing CEOs in the World

By Morten T. Hansen, Herminia Ibarra & Urs Peyer

January – February, 2013

Harvard Business Review

pp.84-85 (article is pp.81-95)

http://hbr.org/2013/01/the-best-performing-ceos-in-the-world/

Strategic CSR - Moral Argument for CSR

Back in July, during a campaign event, President Obama said the following:

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.  There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own.  I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service.  That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.”

The official transcript of Obama’s remarks are available in the url below. The response to what he said was astonishment, disbelief, and what seemed to be widespread criticism (some of the more inventive stuff made it into its own website: http://didntbuildthat.com/ and Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn't_build_that), with The Wall Street Journal claiming in an editorial that, as a result of the speech, “the self-made man is an illusion” and that:

“This burst of ideological candor is already resonating like nothing else Mr. Obama's said in years. The Internet is awash with images of the President telling the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and other innovators they didn't build that. … Beneath the satire is the serious point that Mr. Obama's homily is the soul of his campaign message. The President who says he wants to be transformational may be succeeding—and subordinating to government the individual enterprise and risk-taking that underlies prosperity.”

As opposed to a widely-reported “gaffe,” I was struck by how unremarkable Obama’s comments were. I understand the political undertone of the criticism, but what Obama said was just plain common sense. The contrast in perspectives reminded me of Michael Lewis’ commencement speech to last year’s graduating class from Princeton (see: Strategic CSR – Luck and responsibility). The point of Lewis’ speech was to emphasize to the students that luck played a significant part of their success (luck in being born into supportive families, luck in getting good opportunities, luck in being able to go to school in a country that has great universities, etc.) and that, as a result, they have a responsibility to others who have not been as lucky. Essentially, Lewis (eloquently) and Obama (a little more clumsily) were articulating the Moral Argument for CSR (Chapter 1, p14):

“CSR broadly represents the relationship between a company and the principles expected by the wider society within which it operates. It assumes businesses recognize that ‘for profit’ entities do not exist in a vacuum, and that a large part of their success comes as much from actions that are congruent with societal values as from factors internal to the company.”

The idea that there is some kind of moral argument for CSR seems fundamental, to me. More importantly, it is fundamental to ensuring meaningful change occurs on a society-wide basis. To the extent that we understand that we are a group that is “all in this together,” we stand a much better chance of building a cohesive society; to the extent that we are all individuals who need to only look out for ourselves, then there is no society to be responsible towards.

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/

Remarks by the President at a Campaign Event in Roanoke, Virginia

Roanoke Fire Station #1, Roanoke, Virginia

July 13, 2012

The White House

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/13/remarks-president-campaign-event-roanoke-virginia

Strategic CSR - Human nature

The article in the url below is interesting because it reflects on a fundamental aspect of human nature – Are we essentially flawed beings who have to struggle against our innate tendencies in order to exist in a civilized society, or is ‘evil’ (immoral, unethical) behavior the exception and humans are preordained to be ‘good’?

I see reflections of this debate within the CSR community in relation to the fundamental role of for-profit firms (and all organizations) in society. Are firms (and the executives who work in them) essentially powers for good that occasionally commit transgressions, or are they essentially negative elements of society—freeing the individuals that work there to pursue short-term, self-centered gain under the cloak of group anonymity?

The article, which is an interview with the psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple, focuses on the mass-shooting that occurred in Norway over the summer, but the discussion reflects on the motivations underlying human behavior more broadly:

“The human impulse to explain the inexplicably horrific is revealing, according to Dr. Dalrymple, in two respects—one personal, one political. First, it says something about us that we feel compelled to explain evil in a way that we don't feel about people's good actions. The discrepancy arises, he says, ‘because [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau has triumphed,’ by which he means that ‘we believe ourselves to be good, and that evil, or bad, is the deviation from what is natural.’ For most of human history, the prevailing view was different. Our intrinsic nature was something to be overcome, restrained and civilized. But Rousseau's view, famously, was that society corrupted man's pristine nature. This is not only wrong, Dr. Dalrymple argues, but it has had profound and baleful effects on society and our attitude toward crime and punishment. For one thing, it has alienated us from responsibility for our own actions. For another, it has reduced our willingness to hold others responsible for theirs.”

The idea that we have divorced behavior from responsibility has many applications in the CSR debate (both in terms of corporations and their stakeholders) that are an underlying theme of these Newsletters. It is connected to the belief that, as a society, we have moved away from valuing strong institutions that bind us and constrain our behavior within normative rules constructed over decades of social civilization (a broad, long-term focus), towards a society that is focused on the pursuit of individual happiness and self-indulgence (a narrow, short-term focus) and that any attempt to limit that pursuit is resisted.

I believe this shift against society and in favor of the individual is a significant barrier to meaningful progress in the CSR debate. Without the idea that society is more important than the individual, rather than the other way around, we lose what Dalrymple describes as our “transcendent purpose,” which governs our daily actions and, ultimately, guides our willingness to make personal sacrifice in the name of something larger than ourselves:

“’After all,’ Dr. Dalrymple says, ‘having a very consistent worldview, particularly if it gives you a transcendent purpose, answers the most difficult question: What is the purpose of life?’”

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/

Unraveling the Mystery of Murderous Minds

By Brian M. Carney

2 August 2011

The Wall Street Journal

Late Edition - Final

A11

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904888304576476052920894000.html

Strategic CSR - Investors vs. Speculators

If you haven’t seen it yet, this YouTube video is compelling TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC19fEqR5bA

The video is a BBC interview with Alessio Rastani, an investor who presents a starkly honest perspective on the Euro zone economic crisis from his view as someone whose job it is to prosper from such events.

As explained in the article in the url below:

“Wall Street now has its equivalent of a reality TV star. A clip from the BBC of a self-described trader admitting to dreaming of financial doom as a money spinner has spread like wildfire over the Internet. The would-be Gordon Gekko doesn’t work for a Wall Street firm, but his vulgar amorality offers a description of trading that has struck a chord with a public smoldering over bank bailouts. Alessio Rastani, an ersatz trader, wasn’t a big name in finance. He was nobody until this week. Still, he has some claim to represent the primitive id of traders everywhere. His obvious indifference to the human suffering caused by financial collapses and economic downturns — in this case the crisis facing European nations — seemingly shocked the public, not to mention the BBC anchors who let him rant ad nauseam.”

The disconnect between the core purpose of the stockmarket (a vehicle for firms to raise capital) and investors today (who act more like gamblers) is undermining much of the good work being done within CSR (The Shareholder Shift—From Investor to Speculator, pp. 44-46). CEOs and executives who recognize the potential of for-profit firms to be the core of the solution, rather than the problem, are constrained in their ability to act in the long-term interests of their organizations and respond to the demands of a broad base of stakeholder groups. Understanding that we all choose which jobs/careers we do and whether we decide to act in the broader, societal interest or our own narrow, short term interest is essential to determining the future society we will create.

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/

A reality star in trading

Reuters Breaking News

September 30, 2011

The New York Times

B2

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/business/alessio-rastani-a-reality-star-in-trading.html

Strategic CSR - Unilever

In November, Unilever launched its “sustainable living plan” (http://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living/):

“We have ambitious plans to grow our company, creating jobs and income for all whose livelihoods are linked to our success – employees, suppliers, customers, investors, and thousands of farmers around the world. But growth at any cost is not viable. We want to be a sustainable business in every sense of the word. So we have developed a plan – the “Unilever Sustainable Living Plan” – that will enable billions of people to increase their quality of life – without increasing their environmental impact.”

The plan was received well by the CSR community (e.g., http://tobywebb.blogspot.com/2010/11/unilever-raises-sustainability-bar-but.html) due to specific targets that build on Unilever’s ongoing commitment to CSR. In particular, the firm commits by 2020 to:

“Help more than 1 billion people improve their health and well-bring. Halve the environmental impact of our products. Source 100% of our agricultural raw materials sustainably.”

As the article in the url below highlights, Unilever sees this as important for business:

“Unilever has a long history of doing well by doing good. William Lever, one of its founders, created Lifebuoy soap to encourage cleanliness and reduce infectious diseases in Victorian Britain. Today, in the developing world, 3.5m children under five die from diarrhoea and respiratory infections. Teaching children to wash their hands is a way of reducing this toll. The company sees opportunities to save lives and sell soap.”

What was striking about the announcement, however, was the framing of the document by Unilever’s CEO, Paul Polman. Rather than focus on the cost savings to the firm in an attempt to justify the plan to investors, Polman instead issued a challenge:

“Unilever has been around for 100-plus years. We want to be around for several hundred more years. So if you buy into this long-term value-creation model, which is equitable, which is shared, which is sustainable, then come and invest with us. If you don't buy into this, I respect you as a human being, but don't put your money in our company.”

Importantly, Polman stuck with this line, even in the face of a lukewarm reception by investors. In the period shortly after the announcement:

“… the Financial Times reported his company's shares were lagging behind both competitors' and the market. Analysts gave Mr Polman credit for six quarters of year-on-year volume growth, raised margins and greater cash generation. But they doubted his ability to maintain this pace.”

Rather than present any cause for concern, however, Polman responded by reinforcing his underlying message, while also stopping the issuing of earnings guidance to investors:

“We certainly don't want to attract the investor base that wants higher and higher and quicker results against targets that we put out every 90 days.”

The decision to frame this announcement in an absolute moral argument, rather than a relative business argument, was refreshing, made all the more so by how unique it was. While acknowledging this, however, the article’s author feared this put the CEO at risk:

“Even the most patient investor eventually needs a decent return. If Mr Polman fails to deliver that, he may run short of supporters who understand his language.”

This concern was counteracted by a more positive message in the Ethical Corporation Magazine’s coverage of the launch (http://www.ethicalcorp.com/communications-reporting/unilever-sustainable-living-planned):

“Ultimately, Unilever’s pledge points to a new model of doing business: one in which economic growth is “decoupled” from negative social-economic costs. One company, however large, cannot shape the system. But it can signal the way.”

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/

Long-term corporate plans may be lost in translation

By Michael Skapinker

761 words

23 November 2010

Financial Times

Asia Ed1

13

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/78cf6070-f66e-11df-846a-00144feab49a.html

or

http://cachef.ft.com/cms/s/0/78cf6070-f66e-11df-846a-00144feab49a.html

Strategic CSR - CEOs

The article in the url below argues that firms are currently ill-served by the stock markets and managers that craft strategies designed to maximize short term share price are doomed to fail. As a result, the authors recommend six actions that CEOs should take to “decouple their long-run strategies from the short-run vagaries of financial markets”:

“• Jettison quarterly guidance.
• Reduce dependence on external capital.
• Focus on individual and not institutional investors.
• Rethink compensation.
• Innovate via adjacencies rather than breakthroughs.
• Invest and acquire countercyclically.”

The authors outline their arguments for each recommendation. Many of the ideas seem intuitive in terms of strategic CSR. Taken together, however, they present a compelling case for change to a long term perspective in forming strategy and managing day-to-day operations.

Take care
David

Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006


CEOs, it is time to decouple from financial markets; Long-term strategy should be divorced from the vagaries of the share price
Govindarajan, Vijay Sundaram, Anant
832 words
21 April 2009
Financial Times
London Ed1
14
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d6f36c0-2da1-11de-9eba-00144feabdc0.html
or
http://readingpad.blogspot.com/2009/04/ceos-it-is-time-to-decouple-from.html

Strategic CSR - The Long Now

The Long Now Foundation (http://www.longnow.org/) is an organization that focuses on combating the “here and now” culture in which we live and trying to get people to think in terms of the bigger picture and a longer time frame. The organization posts these guidelines for thinking in the longer term:

• Serve the long view
• Foster responsibility
• Reward patience
• Mind mythic depth
• Ally with competition
• Take no sides
• Leverage longevity

Notice how all the years on the website (e.g., 01996 = 1996) are written in terms of 10,000 years, rather than 1,000 years.

“The Long Now Foundation was established in *01996 to creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.”

The organization’s major project is the 10,000 Year Clock, which was first proposed by the computer scientist, Daniel Hillis:

"When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 02000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 02000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium."

Hillis is currently working on his second version of the clock. The first design is on display at the London Science Museum.

As Stewart Brand, the California activist who “For more than 40 years … has been at the nexus between California’s counterculture and its technological avant-garde” and is also involved in the Clock of the Long Now, puts it in an interview with the FT (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/652828ec-fbe0-11de-9c29-00144feab49a.html):

“I had been perturbed for a long time”, Brand says, “about how short-term thinking is rewarded a lot and institutionalised a lot. Quarterly reports. Elections every two years for congressmen. A prototype of the clock is now in the Science Museum in London. “The first thing I almost always hear from somebody who I encounter is, ‘How’s the clock coming?’ The clock doesn’t even exist yet, and it’s already working.”

Have a good weekend.

David

Bill Werther & David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility

© Sage Publications, 2006

http://www.sagepub.com/Werther/

Strategic CSR - Business Schools

In the wake of the current financial crisis, business schools have been criticized for their role in producing the managers who built the firms in which poor business decisions were made. In particular, the management theories that inform the business school curricula have been singled out for unflattering attention.

The article in the url below was written by Roger Martin, the Dean at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Firmly embedded in the business school culture, Martin is clear about where he lays the blame:

“The prime culprit for the increasing market volatility that has brought the economy to its knees is a triumvirate of management theories taught in every business school and entrenched in every significant publicly traded company. Intended to ensure longevity and profitability, these theories instead contributed mightily to the technology crash of 2001-02 and the financial services crash of 2008.”

The three theories singled out by Martin are:

“The slide down the slippery slope began with shareholder value theory. … Next came principal-agent theory: the notion that the interests of executive "agents" are not naturally aligned with those of shareholder "principals" … . That in turn led to stock-based compensation alignment theory.”

The common factor connecting the three is the importance of the stock market as a measure of corporate (and, therefore, manager) success. These theories encourage actions that focus on investor perceptions, irrespective of a firm’s real performance. As expectations increasingly become detached from reality, Martin argues, incentives to engage in dubious tactics to meet those inflated expectations increase:

“Improving [real] performance is the hardest way to increase expectations. Easier ways include engineering a series of acquisitions to give the appearance of rapid growth or employing aggressive accounting to give the appearance of higher profitability.”

Martin argues that shareholder value theory should be replaced with incentives to maximize “book value per share” and that stock-based compensation should be replaced with pay tied to performance on “real market measures such as revenue growth, market share, profits and book equity return”:

“While these proposals may seem draconian, they are necessary to save corporations from themselves.”

The debate over the extent of the role of business schools (and U.S. schools, in particular) continues (e.g., http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/41a49c8e-51ea-11de-b986-00144feabdc0.html).

Take care

David

Bill Werther & David Chandler

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility

© Sage Publications, 2006

http://www.sagepub.com/Werther/

Managers must be judged on the real score

Roger Martin
845 words
12 May 2009
Financial Times

Asia Ed1

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fc3d707c-3e60-11de-9a6c-00144feabdc0.html

There is a pdf of the article available at:

http://www.disas.unisi.it/mat_did/riccaboni/417/FT.pdf

Strategic CSR - Ownership and CSR

The article in the url below makes some interesting points regarding the threat to an organization’s long term mission from the dilution of ownership caused by public listing, but is also a bit of a polemic:

“Stewardship means a sense of responsibility for that which you own and handle every day. It implies that the business should be around for generations, and that the owner is responsible for handing it on to the next generation in better shape than he or she inherited it.”

The author makes sizable assumptions about the motivations of executives, directors, and shareholders of public firms, as well as the consequences of these motivations for the long term health of the organization, which lead the reader to the position he is advocating:

“With the separation of ownership from control in the listed company, stewardship does not disappear, but it does erode. In US markets particularly, the chief executive is judged by shareholders on his or her dependability in “hitting the numbers” – or meeting quarterly earnings targets. There is little room for sentimentality about where the company has come from or whether it will still be around in its current form for the next generation.”

Rather than ownership (private, family owned businesses are just as likely to be managed inefficiently as public companies are likely to be focused on the short term), however, I think that the more important distinction in terms of a threat to the organization’s mission is between different kinds of shareholders (Figure 1.4: The Shareholder Shift—From Investor to Speculator, p14). While investors are more likely to take a longer term perspective, speculators/gamblers take a short term position on whether the share price will rise or fall, irrespective of whether or not it deserves to rise or fall.

Take care
Dave

Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006

Essay: Ownership and sustainability – Are listed companies more responsible?
Owners used to be stewards of their company’s future, but this idea has faded in modern publicly-listed companies.
Mark Goyder
July 14, 2008
http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=6004

Strategic CSR - The Daily Show vs. CNBC

For those of you who missed Jon Stewart’s lambasting of CNBC on The Daily Show last week, his interview with Jim Cramer (host of Mad Money, http://www.cnbc.com/id/15838459) last Thursday is compelling TV:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=220533

As usual, Stewart employs comedy to great effect. In addition, however, he confronts Cramer with an honesty and directness that you rarely see on current affairs TV in the U.S. Stewart articulates succinctly the behavior of Wall Street that got us into this mess, but also skewers Cramer (and CNBC) for becoming part of the problem, rather than being the journalists they purport to be. As a result, the interview is both entertaining and uncomfortable to watch because Stewart so completely undermines what it is that must get Cramer out of bed every morning to do his show.

Take care
Dave

Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006

Strategic CSR - Investors

The article in the url below poses the question: “What sort of ownership do shareholders now provide, and how should managers respond?”

In suggesting an answer, the author makes the case for the negative effect of shareholders’ short term perspective on the ability of managers to implement a meaningful strategic vision of the firm (Figure 1.4: The Shareholder Shift—From Investor to Speculator, p14):

“Building and improving a business takes time. You cannot be judged hour by hour on your performance.”

The author argues that the implications of this divergence in interests between managers and investors extend to the definitions of the boundaries of the firm:

“"How can managers get back to being in control of the companies they manage?" … Perhaps this is a futile question, based on a nostalgic view of what companies should be. Maybe business has changed for good, and companies are now barely even semi-permanent organisations, with their own ethos and identity.”

This development also speaks to the importance of instituting a stakeholder perspective that enables firms to prioritize conflicting interests and meet the needs of those they deem to be most important:

“… today there are perhaps as many as seven different types of owners that businesses may have to reckon with, all of them laying claim to assets in different ways.”

The goal should be to focus on:

“… "intrinsic" shareholders, leaving traders and "mechanical" owners to the investor relations department. In short, do not waste management time on people who do not really understand you and will never make the effort to get to know you properly.”

Take care
Dave

Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006

Short-term owners who leave the C-suite bitter
Stern, Stefan
920 words
24 June 2008
Financial Times
London Ed1
16
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/73110d3c-4185-11dd-9661-0000779fd2ac.html

Strategic CSR - Prediction Markets

The article in the url below shows how nonprofits are using an increasingly popular online tool, prediction markets (e.g., the Iowa Electronic Markets, http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/), as a way of raising money for specific causes (Issues: Profit, p200).

On the website https://bet2give.com/, anyone can bet money on events such as the outcome of the Presidential race, or any current affairs, business, or sports event of interest, with the profits won on the bets being donated to a specific charity nominated by the individual:

“Since its debut last September, Bet2give (http://www.bet2give.com/) has attracted about 400 traders and donated about $1,000 to charities that include Kiva, the Nature Conservancy, and National Public Radio.”

The article also profiles an idea by the Long Now Foundation (http://www.longnow.org/) that also draws on prediction markets to generate debate over ideas of social and scientific interest/importance, while raising money for worthwhile causes:

“Its "Long Bets" site (http://www.longbets.org/) charges registered users $50 to publish a prediction that must be socially or scientifically important. Once the prediction is made, registered users can discuss it and challenge the person to turn it into a bet. … When the bet terms are met, either by a date or a predicted event happening, and the winner is decided, the money is sent to a charity of the winner's choice.”

Have a good weekend.
Dave

Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
http://www.sagepub.com/Werther

Non-profits place a bet on prediction markets
By LAUREN FOSTER
770 words
19/20 April 2008
Financial Times
London Ed1
Page 4
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4c2f786e-0da7-11dd-b90a-0000779fd2ac.html

Strategic CSR - Economic Growth

The article in the url below is too long to summarize easily, but I wanted to forward it because I think it is worth reading. The focus of the article (actually a review of three recently published books) is the inflated importance of economic growth in our society through ever-expanding production and consumption. The author doesn’t ask if this economic model is sustainable, because it is clear from his writing that he is convinced it is not. Rather, his goal is to question why our society has evolved in this way and what it might take for us to reconsider. A couple of quotes convey the author’s argument effectively:

“… to raise the worldwide standard of living up to the level now prevailing in Portugal (the last country on the list of the richest thirty) would quadruple world economic output over the next fifty years.”

“Industrial society is roughly 250 years old: make the last ten thousand years equal to twenty-four hours, and we have been producing consumer goods and CO2 for only the last thirty-six minutes. Do the same for the past 1 million years of human evolution, and everything from the steam engine to the search engine fits into the past twenty-one seconds. If we are not careful, hunting and gathering will look like a far more successful strategy for survival than economic growth.”

In short, the author poses the question:

“What would it mean to live in a no-growth economy?”

His implicit answer is that we have no choice but to find out.

Take care
Dave

Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
http://www.sagepub.com/Werther

Fear of fallowing: The specter of a no-growth world
Harper's Magazine
Review
by Steven Stoll
March 2008, pp88-94
http://www.steadystate.org/Files/Harpers_on_EE.pdf

Strategic CSR - Amazon.com

The article in the url link below is a good story of a firm focused on implementing a stakeholder perspective and being rewarded for its efforts (Issues: Stakeholder Relations, p138). In a way that reminds me of Costco’s continuing ability to ignore shareholder demands for short term returns, Amazon has identified its key stakeholder group (its customers) and, as a result, places customer service as its number one priority:

“When I spoke to analysts and investors, they had all kinds of reasons for Amazon's performance last year. … But I couldn't help wondering if maybe there wasn't something else at play here, something Wall Street never seems to take very seriously. Maybe, just maybe, taking care of customers is something worth doing when you are trying to create a lasting company. Maybe, in fact, it's the best way to build a real business -- even if it comes at the expense of short-term results.”

The article quotes Jeff Bezos (Amazon’s founder and CEO):

“I believe that the success we have had over the past 12 years has been driven exclusively by that customer experience. We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them.”

What is encouraging is the firm’s willingness to stick to its beliefs, irrespective of shareholders’ short term demands (Figure 1.4: The Shareholder Shift—From Investor to Speculator, p14):

“Amazon has really had only one stated goal since it began: to be the most customer-centric company in the world. … Wall Street, however, has never placed much value in Mr. Bezos' emphasis on customers. What he has viewed as money well spent -- building customer loyalty -- many investors saw as giving away money that should have gone to the bottom line. … What Wall Street wanted from Amazon is what it always wants: short-term results.”

Amazon’s success, the article argues, was worth building and waiting for:

“Amazon says it has somewhere on the order of 72 million active customers, who, in the last quarter, were spending an average of $184 a year on the site. That's up from $150 or so the year before. Amazon's return customer business is off the charts. According to Forrester Research, 52 percent of people who shop online say they do their product research on Amazon. That is an astounding number.”

Take care
Dave

Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
http://www.sagepub.com/Werther

Put Buyers First? What A Concept
By JOE NOCERA
1843 words
5 January 2008
The New York Times
Late Edition - Final
1
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/technology/05nocera.html

Strategic CSR - Time

This link takes you to a very interesting website called the “World Clock”:

http://www.chippynews.com/worldclock.htm

The description below came from the circular e-mail that was forwarded to me and describes the purpose of the site very well:

“Most clocks are happy just to tell us what time it is. But there are different ways of showing elapsed time, and they are not all chronological. This Web site, which keeps track of nearly every measurement of human progression, is a prime example. If you're a student of statistics, you will have your fill, from the number of traffic accidents since the beginning of 2007, to the number of marriages or divorces for the same period. What makes this site so interesting is that you can see it change before your eyes. Some figures, such as the world population, are in a state of constant change, while others show a much slower increase. Other categories include the number of barrels of oil pumped, cars and computers produced, and the variable temperature of the earth shown in billionths of a degree. If you wish to break down the information into shorter periods, you can view the figures broken down monthly, weekly, daily, and even now (where the counts will start from the moment you click on it).”

Have a good weekend.
Dave

Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
http://www.sagepub.com/Werther