Strategic CSR - Business schools

Last week’s issue of Businessweek contains two articles that appear on the surface to contradict each other. While one article appears to be criticizing business schools for failing to teach CSR sufficiently, the second article is celebrating the growing numbers of CSR and ethics-related classes available to students. The article in the first url below complains about how business schools need to do a better job of teaching CSR because:

“Companies want graduates with a profit orientation alongside a CSR orientation.”

While the demand for such students is there, however, the authors argue that business schools are failing to deliver the appropriately-trained graduates:

“…business schools just are not doing their teaching job very effectively. The sights are not set high enough. Business schools don’t act as if CSR were an integral part of accounting, finance, marketing, and so on. The practice of finance, for example, can have ethical and social implications every single day—so it needs to be taught that way. And business schools are not taking up the invitation from companies to help move CSR beyond the special departments they’re so often in, and into every department, every day. [Also] business schools aren’t focusing on the right students. Schools have tended to focus on the MBA level. But only about 30 percent of business school graduates in the U.S. are MBAs. We need to focus a lot more on the other 70 percent. Undergraduate business students are still forming their idea of what business is all about. Most undergraduate business programs are the last formal education that most students will get—which means this is our only shot to get them on the right track.”

The article in the second url below, however, looks in detail at the growing number of business school elective classes that encourage students to study and work with nonprofit or humanitarian projects:

“…electives are their opportunity to help business students see beyond the numbers, grow personally and professionally, and even wax philosophical. Electives … are a chance to do something a little out of the ordinary. When done well, say professors, electives can get students to work in ways they might not have imagined. There are a slew of MBA electives being offered at top B-schools—too many to name, in fact—that are designed to do just that, and make the world a better place in the process.”

In reality, the articles complement each other and reveal the core problem with how business schools are currently approaching CSR. While the number of electives is increasing, compulsory core classes in CSR or, perhaps more importantly, integrating CSR throughout existing core classes, is much less common. The first article provides the solution to its own problem:

“Make social responsibility part of every subject area in real time. Teach students exactly how social responsibility applies to, say, marketing at the very same time that you’re teaching them to be whizzes at applying all the other tools of that field—in the same class and at the same time as part of a fully integrated toolkit and thought system. They’re inseparable. Business schools fall short of their potential by separating the inseparable. Most say that teaching values is important, but their values don’t truly penetrate the DNA of the school. Adding an ethics class to a century-old business school program makes ethics marginal, not pervasive. Doing corporate citizenship as an intensive, inspiring orientation is terrific—but the impact is limited if it’s set aside once classes begin.”

The penultimate sentence from this quote is central to this issue:

“Adding an ethics class to a century-old business school program makes ethics marginal, not pervasive.”

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/

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Occupy Our Business Schools
Business schools need to do a better job of teaching corporate social responsibility. Step one: Make it an integral part of every teachable moment
By David L. Ikenberry and Donna Sockell

Bloomberg Businessweek
January 12, 2012
http://newsletters.businessweek.com/c/1009319/c55a2ee820194f0f/2

MBA Electives Offer Hands-On Learning
Business school electives have taken a turn for the creative, tackling everything from New York City's problems to health care to humanitarian relief
By Francesca Di Meglio

Bloomberg Businessweek
January 12, 2012
http://newsletters.businessweek.com/c/1009319/c55a2ee820194f0f/1

Strategic CSR - Society

The article in the url below is a review of a recently published book about marriage within the African-American community. I forward it to you because of the final two sentences in the final paragraph. The reviewer sums up the message of the book she is reviewing as more than a critique of marriage—it is “an alarm bell warning of the failure of American partnerships.” She concludes her review with the following:

“[The author] alerts us to the consequences [of these failing partnerships] for families, and I would add that the alarm rings beyond marriage, to a broader social collapse that includes distrust of neighbors, weakened social networks and community institutions, evictions, foreclosures, diminished opportunity, hostility toward those we deem different and skepticism toward enduring human connection. In short, the ties that bind need tightening.”

If that is an accurate depiction of where we (the U.S.?) are as a society, then where do we go from here? More pertinently, where does it leave us regarding CSR? How do we start repairing the relationships that form the foundation of a more cohesive society in which corporations have an incentive to be socially responsible and their stakeholders have an incentive to hold them to account for their actions?

Teaching ethics and CSR in business schools has to be an important part of the answer. Look for more on this on Monday.

Have a good weekend.

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 Wedding Gap

By Imani Perry

September 18, 2011

The New York Times Book Review

Late Edition - Final

11

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/books/review/is-marriage-for-white-people-by-ralph-richard-banks-book-review.html

Strategic CSR - CSR vs. ethics

The article in the url below draws an instructive distinction between a socially responsible company and an ethical company. The author is not objective (he is writing for the Institute of Global Ethics’ newsletter Ethics Newsline), but that does not diminish the value of the conversation. In short, the author conceptualizes CSR as a subset of the broader idea of ethics:

“Responsibility … is one of five distinct core values that define, globally, the idea of ethics. A necessary but not sufficient condition for ethics, it needs to be fleshed out by the other four values: honesty, respect, fairness, and compassion. Ethics requires all five. So can an individual or a corporation have a strong sense of responsibility without necessarily being honest? Yes. The opposite can also arise, where a deeply honest person proves to be irresponsible. These are two big, different ideas.”

Partly, this characteristic of being more than one thing at once reflects the complexity of modern corporations. No firm is either all-good or all-bad and any means of measuring CSR that suggests otherwise is not sufficiently subtle to be of value.

It is the author’s broader argument, however, that is stimulating. While I am not wholly convinced of the details (and the reader comments at the bottom of the webpage raise some good points), the article is meaningful on a deeper level. Implicitly, the author is taking aim at the superficial nature of much of the work firms refer to as CSR, but he is also questioning the ability of the CSR community to validate that work. This explains why firms like Enron and BP can be heralded by the CSR community as examples of ‘best-practice’ organizations, only to be later exposed as unethical (non-CSR) firms in reality. Whenever a third party attempts to evaluate a firm, they are liable to some degree of obfuscation or distortion:

“Of course corporate responsibility attracts customers. Of course it is good business. And of course it must be fully ethical. They must not only do the right things (which is CR) but do things right (which is ethics). Increasingly, customers are demanding both. Look for smart CR companies to make this connection quickly and bring the two together.”

Greenwashing is a label that has become too-easily thrown around, but it speaks to a core problem within CSR—the ability of stakeholders to define and measure what we think of as responsible behavior in a way that allows comparisons across organizations. The answer is easy to conceptualize and difficult to implement. First, we need to find a way to assess accurately those firms that are genuinely conducting business in a way that is qualitatively different to those firms that are simply using CSR to sell more products; then, we need to educate the firm’s stakeholders to differentiate among these firms in ways that reward the firms that most constructively contribute to social value, broadly defined.

Both steps are essential to ensure sufficient, meaningful change.

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/

Why Corporate Social Responsibility Needs Ethics

By Rushworth M. Kidder

October 3, 2011

Institute for Global Ethics: Ethics Newsline

http://www.globalethics.org/newsline/2011/10/03/social-responsibility/

Strategic CSR - Welcome back!

Welcome back to the Strategic CSR Newsletter! The first Newsletter of the Spring semester is below. As always, your comments and ideas are welcome.

The article in the url below contains some interesting/alarming/unsurprising/disputed data (take your pick depending on your perspective) about the level of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2010. These data were released in December and are the most recent available. Some excerpts from the article:

“Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.

[Scientists] do not expect the extraordinary growth to persist, but do expect emissions to return to something closer to the 3 percent yearly growth of the last decade, still a worrisome figure that signifies little progress in limiting greenhouse gases. The growth rate in the 1990s was closer to 1 percent yearly.

In the United States, emissions dropped by a remarkable 7 percent in the recession year of 2009, but rose by just over 4 percent [in 2010], the new analysis shows. This country is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pumping 1.5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere last year. The United States was surpassed several years ago by China, where emissions grew 10.4 percent in 2010, with that country injecting 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

‘Each year that emissions go up, there’s another year of negotiations, another year of indecision,’ said Glen P. Peters, a researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo and a leader of the group that produced the new analysis. ‘There’s no evidence that this trajectory we’ve been following the last 10 years is going to change.’”

Combining this news with the failure of the climate negotiators to reach a substantive agreement on an extension to the Kyoto Protocol in Durban in December (http://www.economist.com/node/21541806), together with Canada’s decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol altogether (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16151310), and the end of 2011 was not good for the environment.

Something has to change, and pretty soon, although all the signs indicate that this change will not happen in 2012.

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/

Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions in 2010 Show the Biggest Jump Ever Recorded

By Justin Gillis

December 5, 2011

The New York Times

Late Edition - Final

A4

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/science/earth/record-jump-in-emissions-in-2010-study-finds.html

Strategic CSR - Corporate Stakeholder Responsibility

This will be the last CSR Newsletter of the Fall semester. Have a great holiday season and I will see you in January!

Some food for thought over the break:

In the article in the url below in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, Al Gore and David Blood (co-founders of Gore’s sustainability-focused investment fund) present “A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism”:

“We are once again facing one of those rare turning points in history when dangerous challenges and limitless opportunities cry out for clear, long-term thinking. The disruptive threats now facing the planet are extraordinary: climate change, water scarcity, poverty, disease, growing income inequality, urbanization, massive economic volatility and more. Businesses cannot be asked to do the job of governments, but companies and investors will ultimately mobilize most of the capital needed to overcome the unprecedented challenges we now face.”

Gore and Blood define “sustainable capitalism” as:

“ … a framework that seeks to maximize long-term economic value by reforming markets to address real needs while integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics throughout the decision-making process.”

While I agree with much of the sentiment and intentions underlying the authors’ arguments, I believe their effort is misguided because it continues to demand unsolicited, proactive change from corporations:

“We recommend five key actions for immediate adoption by companies, investors and others to accelerate the current incremental pace of change to one that matches the urgency of the situation.”

Consistently, for-profit firms have demonstrated that they are very good at reacting to market forces and economic incentives, and that they are not very good at predicting consumer trends or shifting markets in ways that counter demonstrated demand.

An alternative focus of the efforts of the CSR community that I believe will more likely lead to the meaningful change Gore and Blood would like to see is to focus on a demand-pull strategy, rather than a supply-push strategy. In particular, we need to shift the focus from firms to their stakeholders. In Strategic CSR, we define CSR  in the following way:

“[CSR is] a view of the corporation and its role in society that assumes a responsibility among firms to pursue goals in addition to profit maximization and a responsibility among a firm’s stakeholders to hold the firm accountable for its actions.” (Chapter 1: What is CSR? p5)

In other words, there is a responsibility on stakeholders to hold firms to account that is equal to the responsibility on firms to act in a socially responsible manner. I believe this more balanced approach is essential for generating meaningful change. Until stakeholders begin holding firms to account (i.e., governments start regulating effectively, suppliers start choosing firms that treat them fairly, consumers start discriminating among firms based on their ability to maximize social value, etc.), we will not see a comprehensive shift to a sustainable economic model. Firms’ primary purpose is to make a profit. As such, their risk tolerance for actions that undermine that purpose is limited. If, however, stakeholders are willing to translate their values, needs, and concerns into action that punishes those firms that fail to meet those criteria and rewards those firms that exceed expectations, then CSR becomes essential to survival. Given such incentives, for-profit firms have demonstrated time and again that they are capable of rapidly changing the way they operate.

Firms are good at making a profit. It is up to a firm’s stakeholders to define the parameters of which actions are profitable and which are not.

For more thoughts on Corporate Stakeholder Responsibility, see:

http://blogs.hbr.org/what-business-owes-the-world/2010/04/why-arent-we-stressing-stakeho.html

See you in 2012!

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 Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism

By Al Gore and David Blood

The Wall Street Journal

December 14, 2011

pA21

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203430404577092682864215896.html

Strategic CSR - Walmart

Just when you think Walmart is making strides in relation to CSR broadly defined, the article in the url below reminds us that, beyond seeing sustainability as a means to decrease costs, the firm has a way to go before it incorporates a CSR perspective throughout all aspects of operations (Chapter 3, p53). In a policy statement released in September:

“Wal-Mart said it planned to source a total of $20 billion in products from women-owned businesses in the United States over the next five years, which works out to an average of $4 billion a year, versus the $2.5 billion a year it currently spends, and to double what it buys from women-owned businesses globally by 2016. The company said it would also support training of women in factories and farms that are Wal-Mart suppliers, donate $100 million to causes supporting women’s economic development, and ask its vendors and services firms like ad agencies or public relations firms to increase gender and minority representation on their Wal-Mart accounts.”

As Leslie A. Dach, executive vice-president for corporate affairs at Walmart, explains:

“‘If you look at retail, the vast majority of our customers are women, and if you look at Wal-Mart, the majority of our associates are women. ... It makes complete sense for us to really have a focus on how we have the best associates we can, how we help women suppliers succeed and how we engage our communities.’”

But, if this approach ‘makes so much sense,’ why did Walmart wait until it faced the possibility of crippling class-action litigation (and, now, individual claims stemming from the failed attempt to group all female employees of the firm as a ‘class’) before considering its introduction? In addition, why limit the commitment to such a small percentage of Walmart’s overall procurement budget?

“The $4 billion a year, on average, that Wal-Mart will spend sourcing from women in the United States works out to about 5 percent of the company’s annual operating expenses.”

In response, Walmart stated that the new policy announcement “was not in reaction to the class-action suit against Wal-Mart, which charged unfair treatment of women in the workplace.” The court ruling was decided on June 20, 2011 and Walmart’s new policy announcement was released on September 14, 2011.

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/

Wal-Mart to Announce Women-friendly Plans

By Stephanie Clifford and Stephanie Strom

The New York Times

September 14, 2011

pB3

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/business/wal-mart-to-announce-women-friendly-plans.html

Strategic CSR - Legal Rights

The article by Joel Bakan in the url below contrasts the progress of two relatively recently established, legally-protected entities—corporations and children. First, children, which emerged as a protected class towards the end of the nineteenth century:

“By the early 20th century, the “century of the child,” as a prescient book published in 1909 called it, was in full throttle. Most modern states embraced the general idea that government had a duty to protect the health, education and welfare of children.”

Second, corporations, which gained their status as a “legal—albeit artificial—person” in the twentieth century:

“Lawyers, policy makers and business lobbied successfully for various rights and entitlements traditionally connected, legally, with personhood.”

Bakan, who co-authored the book and documentary, The Corporation (http://www.thecorporation.com/), argues that the interests of these two protected classes (children and corporations) are inherently in conflict:

“Century-of-the-child reformers sought to resolve conflicts in favor of children. But over the last 30 years there has been a dramatic reversal: corporate interests now prevail. Deregulation, privatization, weak enforcement of existing regulations and legal and political resistance to new regulations have eroded our ability, as a society, to protect children.”

In particular, he identifies childhood obesity, electronic media, childhood medication, and toxic chemicals exposure as areas where corporate behavior is fundamentally controlling and damaging child development. He concludes:

“…our current failure to provide stronger protection of children in the face of corporate-caused harm reveals a sickness in our societal soul.”

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 Kids Are Not All Right

By Joel Bakan

August 22, 2011

The New York Times

Late Edition - Final

A19

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/opinion/corporate-interests-threaten-childrens-welfare.html

Strategic CSR - FDA

Here are a couple of quotes from the article in the url below, which focuses on the increased challenges faced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in monitoring the inflow of food- and medical-related products into the U.S.:

“A decade ago, the F.D.A. was responsible for policing six million shipments annually coming through 300 ports. This year, the number of shipments is expected to grow to 24 million … . Nearly two-thirds of all fruits and vegetables and three-quarters of all seafood consumed in the United States now come from outside the country. ”

The scale of the problem quickly becomes evident:

“Government investigators estimated in 2008 that the F.D.A. would need 13 years to check every foreign drug manufacturing plant, 27 years to check every foreign medical device plant and 1,900 years to check every foreign food plant at its rate of inspections at the time. And with imports growing faster than the agency’s inspection force, those numbers have only mounted. ”

The oversight of firms bringing food and medical products into the U.S. is minimal. As a result, the incentive to subvert the controls put in place to regulate these products is high.

Have a good weekend.

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/

F.D.A. Confronts Challenge of Monitoring Imports

By Gardiner Harris

June 21, 2011

The New York Times

Late Edition - Final

B3

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/health/policy/21food.html

Strategic CSR - Coca-cola

The article in the url below questions the value for firms in investing in recycling.

In January 2009, Coke opened a state of the art recycling facility in Spartanburg, North Carolina. We featured it in the second edition of Strategic CSR (Case-studies: Paper vs. Plastic, p314). Coke opened the plant with the ambitious goal “to recycle and reuse 100 percent of its plastic packaging in the United States” (http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/17692). Two and a half years later, as Coke’s director of sustainability Scott Vitters puts it:

“We’re not exactly where we’d want to be. Last year the plant produced only about a third of its targeted 100 million pounds of plastic recycled from PET, or polyethylene terephthalate. For much of this year, the 120,000-square-foot facility has remained mostly unused.”

The reason offered in the article to explain the poor performance is a combination of low consumer recycling rates in the U.S. and Coke and Pepsi’s opposition to 5 or 10 cents bottle deposits. Both factors constrict the supply of used plastic bottles delivered to the plant, which increases per unit costs:

“So low is the supply of recycled, bottle-grade PET that its price is about 10% above that of virgin PET in the U.S., according to Coke and recycling industry executives.”

It gets worse:

“The U.S. recycling rate for plastic bottles made from PET, typically derived from petroleum, was 28% in 2009, according to the National Association for PET Container Resources. That compares with a recycling rate for PET plastic bottles of nearly 50% in Europe.”

A bottle deposit would help (Issues: Compliance, p310), but the soft drinks firms are reluctant to experiment with anything that would push up their costs and/or price, especially in a difficult economy:

“The PET recycling rate in the 10 states with bottle-deposit laws is more than double the national average. In California, which recently strengthened bottle-deposit rules, 68% of PET bottles were recycled last year, according to the state. Europe also uses bottle-deposit rules and other variations of "extended producer responsibility'' laws requiring bottlers to bear recycling costs.”

The outcome is disheartening and will discourage other firms from investing in recycling technology:

“Due in part to the woes at the Spartanburg plant, Coke only has about 5% recycled content in its plastic PET bottles today, down from 10% roughly five years ago. PepsiCo Inc. says it has 10% recycled PET content. Both rates pale with recycled content in aluminum beverage cans, which stands at 68%, according to the Aluminum Association.”

In spite of these figures, Coke says its recycling goals remain in place:

“…to recycle or reuse 100% of its bottles and cans in the U.S. by 2020, and aims to have 10% recycled content in its PET bottles again by next year.”

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/

Bottle Recycling Is Left at the Curb

By Mike Esterl

August 19, 2011

The Wall Street Journal

Late Edition - Final

B1

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904070604576516172235790338.html

Strategic CSR - Walmart

There are three aspects of the article in the url below that I find interesting. First, is that Walmart is changing its grocery supply chain to purchase more locally-grown foods. The move carries the advantage of meeting consumers’ growing demand for local food, but is primarily an attempt to reduce transportation costs:

“This summer, Wal-Mart has lined up farmers to grow jalapeño peppers in 30 states, twice as many as last summer. A decade ago, almost all of the chain's hot peppers came from Florida, California and Mexico. "We can get chili peppers from Florida all day long, but at the end of the day that is not necessarily the best model for us," says Darrin Robbins, Wal-Mart's senior manager for produce. "I'm going to pay a higher price in Ohio for peppers, but if I don't have to ship them halfway across the country to a store, it's a better deal."”

Second, is that loose definitions of sustainability-related terms (such as “organic,” “natural,” and “local”) allow firms to maximize the PR value they get by presenting foods in ways to which consumers respond positively. It also, of course, raises the possibility of greenwash (Chapter 4, p108):

“At most large retailers, fruits and vegetables harvested hundreds of miles away can be touted as locally grown. Such loose definitions have sparked criticism from small farmers and organic-food advocates that the chains are merely adjusting their marketing to capitalize on the latest food trend, rather than making real changes in their procurement practices. Wal-Mart … encourages its managers to buy produce grown within 450 miles of its distribution centers, even if local peaches, for example, cost more than those produced across the country in California.”

And, third, is that, although Walmart changed its logo in the summer of 2008 in a chain-wide re-branding effort, newspapers continue to refer to the firm as Wal-Mart with a hyphen (rather than Walmart). I find the inertia fascinating and can imagine it drives Walmart’s executives nuts. In relation to CSR, it brings to mind firms like Nike, which many people still think of as a non-socially responsible firm, even though (like Walmart) it is now leading best practice in many aspects related to CSR.

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/

‘Local’ Grows on Wal-Mart

By Miguel Bustillo and David Kesmodel

1 August, 2011

The Wall Street Journal

Late Edition - Final

B1

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304223804576448491782467316.html

Strategic CSR - Patagonia

Patagonia ran an interesting ad last week on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. traditionally reserved for excessive amounts of consumption). The full-page ad and accompanying copy are re-produced on ‘The Cleanest Line’—“Weblog for the employees, friends and customers of the outdoor clothing company Patagonia”:

http://www.thecleanestline.com/2011/11/dont-buy-this-jacket-black-friday-and-the-new-york-times.html

and as a pdf at:

http://patagonia.typepad.com/files/nyt_11-25-11.pdf

The title of the ad was “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” Some excerpts from the ad copy:

“Why run an ad in The New York Times on Black Friday telling people, “Don’t Buy This Jacket”?

It’s time for us as a company to address the issue of consumerism and do it head on.

The most challenging, and important, element of the Common Threads Initiative is this: to lighten our environmental footprint, everyone needs to consume less. Businesses need to make fewer things but of higher quality. Customers need to think twice before they buy.

Why? Everything we make takes something from the planet we can’t give back. Each piece of Patagonia clothing, whether or not it’s organic or uses recycled materials, emits several times its weight in greenhouse gases, generates at least another half garment’s worth of scrap, and draws down copious amounts of freshwater now growing scarce everywhere on the planet.

We’re placing the ad in the Times because it’s the most important national newspaper and considered the “paper of record.” We’re running the ad on Black Friday, which launches the retail holiday season. We should be the only retailer in the country asking people to buy less on Black Friday.”

So, why run the ad?

“It’s part of our mission [http://www.patagonia.com/us/patagonia.go?assetid=2047&ln=140] to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. It would be hypocritical for us to work for environmental change without encouraging customers to think before they buy.”

The ad is part of Patagonia’s Common Threads Initiative, which contains five main components designed to re-think our approach to consumerism, in general, and the apparel sector, in particular:

·         REDUCE what you buy

·         REPAIR what you can

·         REUSE what you have

·         RECYCLE everything else

·         REIMAGINE a sustainable world

For more information about the firm’s Common Threads Initiative, see: http://www.patagonia.com/us/common-threads

Have a good weekend

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/