Best Governance Research of 2011 - Free Download

This compilation includes 48 study/survey summaries. Register/login for the free download:

http://www.csrinternational.org/2012/01/25/best-governance-research-of-2011/

Dr Wayne Visser

CEO, CSR International

Best Environmental Research of 2011 - Free dowload

This compilation includes 48 study/survey summaries. Register/login for the free download:

http://www.csrinternational.org/2012/01/19/best-environmental-research-of-2011/

Dr Wayne Visser

CEO, CSR International

Changing the World - One Leader at a Time

By Dr Wayne Visser

Quest for CSR 2.0 Series No.12

We face a crisis of leadership. Our global challenges loom large and clear, but we seem to lack leaders who can make change happen at a scale and speed that match the size and urgency of the problems we face. In an attempt to understand this leadership impasse, I’ve done some research with the University of Cambridge’s Programme for Sustainability Leadership on how change happens. In this blog, I’ll briefly outline some of our conclusions.

Let’s start with what kind of change we’re talking about. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, observes that companies that went from being ‘good to great’ did not rely on revolutions, dramatic change programs or wrenching restructurings. ‘Rather, the process resembled relentlessly pushing a giant flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.’

So we’re talking about catalyzing and scaling up change. And for this change to be successful, leaders need to foster and entrench new values, culture, incentives, rules and resources. In Accenture and the UN Global Compact’s 2010 survey, 54 percent of CEOs felt that a cultural tipping point on sustainability is only a decade away—and 80 percent believe it will occur within 15 years, so perhaps we are nearing a moment of infectious change. Meanwhile, at the organizational level, leaders must catalyze change for sustainability through a suite of actions, including innovation, empowerment, accountability, closed-loop practices and collaboration.

We found that effective sustainability leaders are good at promoting creativity in business models, technology, products and services that address social and environmental challenges. Sustainability leaders also implement structures and processes for good governance, transparency and stakeholder engagement.

Accountability does not have to be all about structures and controls however. Collins believes great leaders foster a culture of discipline, saying “When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls.” According to Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of G.E., “Enron and 9/11 marked the end of an era of individual freedom and the beginning of personal responsibility. You lead today by building teams and placing others first. It’s not about you.”

The best sustainability leaders adopt principles of cradle-to-cradle production, internalizing externalities and extending these principles to the supply chain. Sustainability leaders also build formal cross-sector partnerships, as well as innovative and inclusive collaborative processes such as social networking (Web 2.0). Betty Sue Flowers, co-author of Presence, poses the challenge as a question, saying, “We know a lot about heroic action because that’s in the past of leadership. But how do you have leadership in groups across boundaries, multi-nationally?”

At the people level, leaders catalyze change for sustainability by providing a compelling vision, encouraging long term thinking, making strategic investments and promoting intergenerational equity. Immelt says “every leader needs to clearly explain the top three things the organization is working on. If you can’t, then you’re not leading well.”

Ray Anderson, the late CEO of Interface, saw this as a process of inclusion, saying, “For Interface, sustainability is broader than before: sustainability reaches out to embrace people, processes, products, place, the planet and profits—we now know that none can long be afforded allegiance at the expense of the others.”

Sustainability leaders have to deep knowledge and skills and provide opportunities and resources for appropriate action. This embraces Robert Greenleaf’s notion of servant leadership. He explains that “It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The best test is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”

Transformational sustainability leaders also focus on creating a culture and structure that provides peer support and encouragement and recognizes achievement. Immelt says, “Today, it’s employment at will. Nobody’s here who doesn’t want to be here. So it’s critical to understand people, to always be fair, and to want the best in them.”

In the end, I believe the best leaders are effective storytellers. And they realize that we need a new collective story. As I wrote in Beyond Reasonable Greed, “each time the world changes – when civilizations rise and fall, when new scientific theories challenge our understanding of the universe, when technological innovation reinvents our lifestyle, when political revolution breaks down the old structures of society, or when a global crisis threatens to destroy our planet – humanity is forced to let go of some of its most cherished beliefs in order to create a new mythology to guide its collective psyche.”

We are at just such a fulcrum of change, and the beliefs we need to challenge and modify are many. Maybe it is our belief in the beneficence of the “invisible hand” of the market. Or our belief that a global political deal is all we need to solve the climate crisis. Or that that business has the power to act unilaterally in bringing about a more sustainable and responsible future.

If my experience of living through the political changes in South Africa has taught me anything, it is that change is systemic. It happens because of millions of small actions by millions of people all over the world, some coordinated, some diffuse. Yes, change also happens because of bold leadership, but it always needs an enabling environment, a society or an organization that is ready to change.

Change is something organic. It is worth remembering that the largest living thing in the world is a honey mushroom in Oregon – an interconnected fungus measuring 3.5 miles across. It is said to be 2,400 years old and takes up 2,200 acres (1,665 football fields), with the small mushrooms visible above ground representing only a tiny proportion of its real girth and substance. I think change is something like that too: spread out, interconnected, growing where the ground is most fertile ground and often invisible.

Source

Welcome to this international dialogue, Quest for CSR 2.0, with Dr Wayne Visser, pioneering author, academic and social entrepreneur. The dialogue, hosted by CSRwire Talkback, is based on his groundbreaking book, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business. For the next several weeks, Dr Visser will summarize the main points and key lessons of each chapter of his book, exploring why CSR 1.0 has failed, the 5 Ages and Stages of CSR, the 5 Principles of CSR 2.0 and how to make change happen. Readers will be invited to share their views on each posting. This exciting new series is co-published by CSRwire and CSR International.

Original link on CSRwire

Best CSR Research of 2011 - Free download

Download "Best CSR Research of 2011" for free - a compilation of 70 research
report summaries.

Login/Register to access at:
http://www.csrinternational.org/2012/01/12/csr-research-digest-2011-compilation/

My thanks for our Research Associate, Karina Toonekurg, who compiled these
research digests over the past 12 months.

Enjoy!
Dr Wayne Visser
CEO, CSR International

Sustainable by Design? Lessons in Circularity from Seventh Generation

By Dr. Wayne Visser

Quest for CSR 2.0 Series No.11

The CSR 2.0 principle of circularity has roots in life cycle assessment, cleaner production, sustainable consumption and cradle to cradle concepts. In The Age of Responsibility, I explore various well-known multinational examples, from Interface’s carpets and Nike’s Considered Design shoes to Coca-Cola’s water neutral initiative and Tesco’s carbon neutral programme.

But there are also smaller, more nimble companies, like Seventh Generation, that are able to go much further, much faster. What can we learn from these companies that are intentionally sustainable ‘by design’?

Seventh Generation, an American household cleaning products business started more than 20 years ago by Jeffrey Hollender, took inspiration for its name and philosophy from the Iroquois Confederacy (a council of Native American Indian tribes), which included the admonition that ‘in our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.’ From the beginning, this meant thinking in a circular way about the impact of their products.

To begin with, this meant swimming upstream. “When Seventh Generation told executives at the old Fort Howard Paper Company that we wanted to market bathroom tissue made from unbleached recycled fibre, they laughed,” recalls Hollender. Despite such early resistance, however, Seventh Generation has remained steadfast in its commitment to ‘becoming the world's most trusted brand of authentic, safe, and environmentally-responsible products for a healthy home.’ And indeed, now has an impressive catalogue of cradle to cradle designed products, and has been doing extremely well, showing strong growth even through the recession.

However, ensuring that Seventh Generation lives up to their promise of authenticity is something that requires constant vigilance. For example, in March 2008, the company was ‘exposed’ by the Organic Consumers Association for having detectable levels of the contaminate 1,4-dioxane in their dish liquid. In fact, Seventh Generation’s product was declared the safest of those available and they had been working with suppliers for more than five years to remove it. They have since eliminated the contaminant completely, but as Hollender later declared: “Our effort was simply not good enough. Our real mistake was to exclude consumers and key stakeholders from our ongoing dialogue about dioxane. In short, we flunked the transparency test.”

Of course, the very foundation of transparency is information and the most basic kind is a full list of product ingredients, which, unbelievably, is not required by US law for household products. Consequently, Seventh Generation launched a Show What’s Inside initiative, which included an educational website and an online Label Reading Guide, downloadable directly to shoppers’ cell phones, which helped them interpret labels at the point of purchase, especially any associated risks.

As Hollender and Bill Breen report in their book, The Responsibility Revolution, not long after, SC Johnson launched a cloned version called What’s Inside. “That’s just what we had hoped for,” declared Hollender and Breen. “When a $7.5 billion giant like SC Johnson puts its brawn behind ingredient disclosure, it’s likely that the rest of the industry will follow, regardless of what the regulators do.”

Despite its green image, Seventh Generation knows that it needs to create virtuous cycles in its social as well as its environmental impacts. As a result, in 2009, the company joined Women's Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES) – an organisation committed to building worker-owned, cooperatively-structured, eco-friendly, residential cleaning businesses in San Francisco – to launch Home Green Home, WAGES' fourth worker-owned cooperative. This unique social enterprise serves the city of San Francisco and is creating healthy, dignified jobs for women in an industry known for long hours and low pay. The women who own and work in the business earn wages that average 50 percent more than their non-coop counterparts, and receive health care and paid vacation benefits.

In the future, Seventh Generation and WAGES hope to expand the innovative practice beyond San Francisco. Hollender is under no illusions about how far we collectively still have to go. In his Foreword to The Age of Responsibility, he confesses that:

“Corporate responsibility in its present incarnation has been an enormous disappointment at best. It has not lifted people out of poverty. It has not protected the environment. It has not boosted community wellbeing. It has been too little, too late and at most has succeeded in getting some companies to aspire to simply do less damage than they did before. Instead of changing the world, corporate responsibility merely evolved into a baseline requirement in every company’s license to operate. Where it succeeded, it only managed to slow the rate of decay, which is hardly enough to do much more than maintain the status quo.”

And yet, he remains optimistic. “Though much has changed in the last 25 years, one thing hasn’t: Business is still the only force with the reach and resources to do what needs to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. The hour may be late and the clock loudly ticking but the story of responsible business is not over yet. There’s still room for a happy ending. And the time has come for us to write it for ourselves.”

It is examples like these and many others that show that the principle of circularity is not wishful thinking, but a practical strategy for achieving sustainability and responsibility, economically, socially and environmentally. And together with the other principles of CSR 2.0 or Transformative CSR – creativity, scalability, responsiveness and glocality (touched on in the previous blogs) – these inspiring innovations and bold actions are ushering in the new Age of Responsibility and with it, a new kind of ‘susponsible’ capitalism.

Without a doubt, however, achieving this vision requires change on a scale and urgency that has seldom been witnessed in human history. So the question remains, how do we make change happen? I’ll examine the myriad answers to this in my forthcoming blogs, recommencing in January.

Source

Welcome to this international dialogue, Quest for CSR 2.0, with Dr Wayne Visser, pioneering author, academic and social entrepreneur. The dialogue, hosted by CSRwire Talkback, is based on his groundbreaking book, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business. For the next several weeks, Dr Visser will summarize the main points and key lessons of each chapter of his book, exploring why CSR 1.0 has failed, the 5 Ages and Stages of CSR, the 5 Principles of CSR 2.0 and how to make change happen. Readers will be invited to share their views on each posting. This exciting new series is co-published by CSRwire and CSR International.

Original link on CSRwire

Myths About CSR in Developing Countries

By Wayne Visser

Part of the Quest for CSR 2.0 series.

Are concepts and models of corporate social responsibility (CSR) developed in the West appropriate for developing countries?

I decided to first tackle this question by setting out what I believe to be Seven Popular Myths about CSR in developing countries. Most of these myths exist as a result of the feeding frenzy that inevitably occurs every time the media has hunted down and sunk its teeth into one or other juicy story of corporate exploitation. They, however, become sustainable because they are spread by whole legions of largely well-intentioned people who have vested interests in promoting their particular brand of the truth about CSR.

The Seven Myths:

1. Economic growth is not compatible with CSR.
2. Multinationals are the biggest CSR sinners.
3. Multinationals are the biggest CSR saviours.
4. Developing countries are anti-multinational.
5. Developed countries lead on CSR.
6. Codes can ensure CSR in developing countries.
7. CSR is the same the world over.

Let’s look at these myths each briefly in turn.

Myth 1: Economic growth is not compatible with CSR: What the Index for Sustainable Economic Welfare and Genuine Progress Index show is that GDP growth and quality of life move in parallel until social and environmental costs begin to outweigh economic benefits. According to this ‘threshold hypothesis’ – coined by Chilean barefoot economist, Manfred Max-Neef – most developing countries have yet to reach this divergence threshold. For them, economic growth and the expansion of business activities is still one of the most effective ways to achieve improved social development, while environmental impacts are increasingly being tackled through leapfrog clean technologies.

Myth 2: Multinationals are the biggest CSR sinners: On the ground in most countries, multinationals are generally powerful forces for good, through their investment in local economies, creation of jobs, upgrading of infrastructure, provision of basic services and involvement in community development and environmental conservation. There are always exceptions, of course, and these should be named and shamed. But they shouldn’t overshadow the overall positive role of big companies in developing countries. The cumulative social and environmental impacts of smaller companies, which operate below the radar of the media and out of reach of the arm of the law, are typically far larger than that of the high profile multinationals.

Myth 3: Multinationals are the biggest CSR saviours: Not only do large companies have limited influence over government policy, but most multinationals, despite large capital investments, provide only a minuscule proportion of the total employment in developing countries. The real potential saviours are small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs), including social enterprises, which are labour intensive and better placed to affect local economic development. If the social and environmental impacts of these SMMEs can be improved, the knock on benefits will be proportionally much greater than anything that multinationals could achieve on their own. This is why the work CSR for SMEs by Anahuac University in Mexico and Forum Empresa in Latin America is so encouraging and important.

Myth 4: Developing countries are anti-multinational: Developing countries are often caught in a no-man’s land of under-development in a competitive, monetized, global economy, and the sooner they can modernise and integrate, the better for them. Most often, developing country communities welcome multinationals and their CSR initiatives. This is not the same as saying the developing world should repeat the past mistakes of the developed countries, such as highly polluting industrialisation, nor that multinationals should not be required to be responsible and held accountable. But we should not deny developing countries the dignity of choice, whether it be Unilever products or Coca Cola, both of which have made significant progress on CSR in recent years.

Myth 5: Developed countries lead on CSR: There are countless examples of how developing countries are proving themselves highly adept at delivering the so-called triple bottom line of sustainability, namely balanced and integrated social, economic and environmental benefits. It is actually not surprising, since in developing countries, these three spheres are seldom separable – economic development almost inevitably results in social upliftment and environmental improvement, and vice versa. Whether it is South Africa’s King Code, which encourages integrated sustainability reporting, or A Little World, which uses mobile phone and biometric scanners to bring micro-banking services to the poor in India, a lot of the innovation in CSR is taking place in developing countries.

Myth 6: Codes can ensure CSR in developing countries: The past few years have seen a mushrooming of corporate responsibility codes, standards and guidelines, which developing countries are keen to adopt, if only to satisfy their Western partners. This standardisation trend is both inevitable and necessary in a globalising world—which is desperately searching for an alternative to command-and-control style business regulation in order to satisfy the governance and accountability void which still exists. But this codification tends to measure CSR activities, rather than CSR impacts on the ground. Developing countries need to move rapidly through this Strategic CSR approach in an Age of Management to a more transformative CSR approach in an Age of Responsibility.

Myth 7: CSR is the same the world over: One of the biggest fallacies is that, in a globalised world, CSR can somehow conform to a unitary model. Of course, we need universal principles, like the Global Compact, and perhaps even process frameworks, like ISO 14001. But standardised performance metrics, like those of the Global Reporting Initiative and the numerous sustainability funds and indexes, start to tread on shaky ground. The tendency is for developed country priorities – such as energy and climate change – to receive emphasis and for northern NGO agendas to dominate.

The antitdote to these CSR myths for developing countries is glocality – one of the five principles of CSR 2.0. The term ‘glocal’ – a portmanteau of global and local – is said to come from the Japanese worddochakuka, which simply means global localisation. Or more simply, ‘think global, act local’. The question is, do we see glocality in action, or do we just see corporations in developing countries mimicking the practices of the West?

Source

Welcome to this international dialogue, Quest for CSR 2.0, with Dr Wayne Visser, pioneering author, academic and social entrepreneur. The dialogue, hosted by CSRwire Talkback, is based on his groundbreaking book, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business. For the next several weeks, Dr Visser will summarize the main points and key lessons of each chapter of his book, exploring why CSR 1.0 has failed, the 5 Ages and Stages of CSR, the 5 Principles of CSR 2.0 and how to make change happen. Readers will be invited to share their views on each posting. This exciting new series is co-published by CSRwire and CSR International.

Original link on CSRwire

The Future Faces of CSR Activism

By Dr. Wayne Visser

Quest for CSR 2.0 Series No.9

The third principle of Transformative CSR, or CSR 2.0, is responsiveness. (We explored creativityand scalability in the last two posts). Some of the most important players in the responsiveness game – especially through cross-sector partnerships – are civil society organizations (CSOs, which I prefer rather than the term NGOs). Reflecting on how this sector is changing in the face of increased calls for responsiveness, I have distinguished 10 ‘Paths to the Future’ for CSR activism. I believe that CSOs acting in the CSR space will increasingly be:

• Platforms for transparency – Undertaking investigative exposes & hosting disclosure forums;
• Brokers of volunteerism – Providing project opportunities for employee volunteers;
• Champions of CSR – Raising awareness and increasing public pressure for CSR;
• Advisors of business – Offering consulting services to business on responsibility;
• Agents of government – Working with or on behalf of regulatory authorities;
• Reformers of policy – Pressuring for government policy reforms to incentivise CSR;
• Makers of standards – Developing voluntary standards & inviting business compliance;
• Channels for taxes – Receiving and deploying specially earmarked tax revenues;
• Partners in solutions – Partnering with business/government to tackle specific issues; and
• Catalysts for creativity – Creating social enterprises & supporting social entrepreneurs.

Let’s explore these ‘future faces’ of CSR activism in a little more detail below, drawing on examples from around the world of CSOs emerging roles.

Platforms for transparency – The role of CSOs as agitators for, and agents of, greater transparency seems set to continue. For example, in Senegal, Benin, and Guinea, CSO intervention has been critical in the development of a free press. And in India, Karmayog allows citizens to report specific instances of bribery and corruption on a live, public website.

Brokers of volunteerism – As companies increasingly see the benefits of volunteerism (greater job satisfaction, productivity, commitment and loyalty), CSOs are increasingly becoming people-brokers, as sources of projects for employee volunteers. For example, the Voluntary Workcamps Association of Ghana (VOLU) coordinates volunteers to help with the construction of schools, reforestation and AIDS campaigning.

Champions of CSR – While some CSOs remain sceptical about CSR, in many countries they are the main agents for promoting CSR. For example, in Iran, a group of CSOs have joined forces with the UNDP to promote CSR through targeted training for managers under the umbrella of the UN MDGs. And in Senegal, CSR awareness has grown mainly due to a CSO called La Lumière in Kédougou.

Advisors of business – A combination of genuine expertise, valuable perspectives and a crunch on funding means that many CSOs are turning to consultancy, working with and advising companies not only on specific social and environmental issues, but also more generally on sustainability and responsibility. For example, in Hungary, as opposed to the traditional role of watchdog, many CSOs engage in consultancy on CSR.

Agents of government – The phenomena of GONGOs (government organised NGOs), GINGOs (government-inspired NGOs), GRINGOs (government regulated/run and initiated NGOs) and PANGOs (party-affiliated NGOs) are becoming more widespread, no longer just seen in China. Even where governments are not setting up or running the CSOs, they are supporting them as key catalysts. For example, Belgian CSOs receive €3 government funding for every €1 they raised themselves.

Reformers of policy – Realizing that the ‘rules of the game’ need to change, CSOs are increasingly getting involved in legal reform. For example, in Indonesia, it was largely due to rising pressure from CSOs that the Law No. 40/2007 concerning Limited Liability Companies was introduced to make CSR mandatory.

Makers of standards – In an effort to raise the bar on voluntary action by companies, many CSOs are developing their own social and environmental codes and standards, then inviting business to comply with them. For example, in Israel, the Public Trust Organisation established The Public Trust Code, covering advertising, transparency, disclosure, service and product guarantees, honesty in contracts and privacy of information.

Channels for taxes – In some countries, the effectiveness of CSOs has earned them the ability to source tax dollars directly. For example, in Mexico, the FECHAC (Federation of the Chihuahuan Industry) is a CSO, set up after devastating floods in 1990, that is funded through a special annual tax on more than 38,000 industries. And in Romania, the 2% Law (in terms of the Fiscal Code) allows citizens to redirect 2% of personal income tax to a CSO.

Partners in solutions – Not only are CSOs collaborating with business more and more, but also with governments and multilateral agencies. For example, in South Korea, ‘Cross Sector Alliance’ is one of 5 approaches to CSR being promoted, while in Africa the New Nigeria Foundation provides a platform for mobilizing non-traditional resources through public-private partnerships. In Turkey, TUSEV promotes linkages between domestic and international CSOs and encourages CSR by putting foreign and domestic firms in contact with appropriate CSOs.

Catalysts for creativity – CSOs are increasingly expected to provide solutions, not just point out the problems, especially by launching or supporting social enterprises. For example, in Bangladesh, BRAC (formerly Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) has been crucial in the microcredit movement, and in Singapore, the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) has 12 social enterprises and 4 related organisations that are owned by more than 500,000 workers.

However the future unfolds, it is clear that CSOs will be a significant player in the new landscape of responsible governance and accountability, both as a counter-balancing force and a partner to governments and business. In fact, I believe CSOs will be the responsive glue that holds society together in the turbulent years ahead.

Source

Welcome to this international dialogue, Quest for CSR 2.0, with Dr Wayne Visser, pioneering author, academic and social entrepreneur. The dialogue, hosted by CSRwire Talkback, is based on his groundbreaking book, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business. For the next several weeks, Dr Visser will summarize the main points and key lessons of each chapter of his book, exploring why CSR 1.0 has failed, the 5 Ages and Stages of CSR, the 5 Principles of CSR 2.0 and how to make change happen. Readers will be invited to share their views on each posting. This exciting new series is co-published by CSRwire and CSR International.

Original link on CSRwire