http://www.ssireview.org/articles/ Strategies, Tools, and Ideas for Nonprofits, Foundations, and Socially Responsible Businesses en katiejh@stanford.edu Copyright 2008 2008-08-24T15:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/smoke_and_mirrors/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/smoke_and_mirrors/ Since the World Health Organization clamped down on tobacco advertising, corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are among the few remaining outlets that tobacco companies have to promote themselves publicly. British American Tobacco Malaysia (BATM), for example, has won the favor of the Malaysian government and people by helping tobacco growers, making donations to cultural institutions, funding scholarships, developing youth smoking prevention programs, and reporting on its activities. A recent scholarly review of BATM’s CSR efforts concludes, however, that “a socially responsible tobacco corporation is an oxymoron and must be identified as such.” “We wanted to hold up a mirror and show that BATM’s activities cannot be reconciled with the fact that tobacco is the world’s leading cause of preventable illness and premature death,” says Simon Barraclough, a professor in the School of Public Health at Australia’s La Trobe University and the article’s lead author. The review, which appears in the April 2008 issue of Social Science & Medicine, identifies several paradoxes in BATM’s CSR initiatives. For example, although the company plants trees to be carbon neutral, it does not track the environmental impact of cigarette smoke or discarded packets and butts. BATM sponsors a youth antismoking program, but its message… Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-08-11T14:00:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/c_level_diversity/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/c_level_diversity/ Last September, on the 50th anniversary of the landmark desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, Americans acknowledged how the Little Rock Nine (as the first group of black students came to be called) prompted dramatic changes that would create new opportunities for minorities in the coming decades. Indeed, the face of America has changed dramatically in the last 50 years. Consider the demographics of Houston, for instance, our nation’s fourth largest metropolitan area. Although 55 percent of Houstonians age 50 and older are white, 77 percent of young adults ages 18 to 30 are minority. And demographics are shifting similarly across the United States—except in corporate America’s executive offices, that is. Despite composing 28 percent of the overall U.S. population, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans represent only 14 percent of graduates from leading undergraduate colleges and universities. What’s more, these minorities fill only 6 percent to 7 percent of the fast-track entry-level jobs post-college, 8 percent of the major MBA programs, and 3 percent of senior executive positions at major corporations. Why the Problem Exists Students of color have always prioritized going to college, despite the many obstacles along their path. Still, only 45 percent of minority college… Education, Corporate Social Responsiblity, Philanthropy & Responsible Investing 2008-05-29T14:00:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/baked_goods/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/baked_goods/ In 1994, Patricia “Trish” Karter and two partners founded Dancing Deer Baking Company as an all-natural Boston bakery that sold cakes to upscale local restaurants and cafes. Today, the company sells more than half a million units of cookies, cakes, brownies, and mixes through national supermarkets, retail stores, and the Internet. Dancing Deer will generate $15 million in revenue for the fiscal year ending June 2008 and hopes to pass $50 million in sales by 2012. Increasing sales means increasing social impact for this double bottom line business. Dancing Deer is located in and hires many of its 85 employees from Roxbury, a low-income Boston neighborhood. Many of its employees are low-to-moderate income, minority, and female. Because Dancing Deer believes in motivating its employees and cultivating female business ownership, employees own a 10 percent equity stake in the business. In addition, Dancing Deer donates a portion of its proceeds to One Family Inc., an organization created by the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Charitable Foundation to end family homelessness in Massachusetts. Since the philanthropic partnership began in 2001, Dancing Deer has contributed $200,000, says Toni Wiley, One Family’s executive director. “We look… Social Entrepreneurship, Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-04-20T06:00:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_greening_of_wal_mart/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_greening_of_wal_mart/ In 1989, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. launched one of the first major retail campaigns to sell environmentally safe products in recyclable or biodegradable packaging. The corporation promoted these eco-friendly products by labeling them with green-colored shelf tags. Although the company boasted more than 300 green products at its peak, it did not directly set or monitor the environmental standards of its suppliers. This resulted in negative publicity for Wal-Mart when the public learned that a green-labeled brand of paper towels had only a recycled tube – the towels themselves were unrecycled paper treated with chlorine bleach. The green tag program began to wane, and by the mid-1990s environmental issues seemed to have slipped off the company’s list of priorities. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart’s reputation among consumers was also slipping. Issues surrounding its competitive practices and labor policies loomed large in the public eye. “The company’s environmental record was nothing to boast about, either,” according to one Fortune article.1 Indeed, a 2005 McKinsey & Company study found that between 2 percent and 8 percent of consumers had stopped shopping at Wal-Mart because of the company’s practices.2 Against this backdrop, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. unveiled a new plan… Environment, Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-04-07T15:32:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/mbas_gone_wild/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/mbas_gone_wild/ I have an MBA. And like a lot of other people with MBAs, I think I’m pretty smart. Show me a nonprofit facing a major strategic challenge and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts I’ll come up with a business solution that will deliver results. What’s that? Your after-school program needs a plan to ensure its future success? I’ve got an idea for self-sustaining income: Why not start a little factory where the kids can spend their after-school hours making fashionable shoes? (And don’t worry about paying them much; they’re getting valuable work experience!) OK, I’m really not like that. But it has taken years in the nonprofit sector to appreciate the challenge of applying business best practices to that sector. In fact, like the proverbial bull in a china shop, MBAs like me can, without appropriate understanding of nonprofits, actually wreak havoc when let loose in the often alien world of nonprofit strategic planning. Here’s how it usually works: Step 1: MBAs arrive at the nonprofit with great fanfare (preferably to the musical accompaniment of Celine Dion’s “I’m Your Angel”). Step 2: We offer advice and recommendations (based largely on forprofit business models that may or may not work… Nonprofit Management, Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-03-10T16:43:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/equal_partners/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/equal_partners/ At dawn, a handful of tourists sit in watchful silence on a floating platform, hoping to spot one of the giant river otters that live in this Amazonian oxbow lake. Their Peruvian guide peers through her binoculars. She directs their gaze to a macaw whose call descends from the rain forest canopy. Back at the lodge, the tourists relax in thatched-roof open-air buildings constructed from sustainable forest materials. At dinner, they enjoy a buffet of traditional Peruvian foods, some grown by local farmers. All of the kitchen and cleaning staff, the drivers, and many of the multilingual guides come from the local community. The tourists are guests at Posada Amazonas, an ecologically friendly lodge in southeastern Peru that operates as a partnership between the Lima-based for-profit company Rainforest Expeditions and the community of Infierno, which includes the native Ese’eja people and more recent settlers. “Tourism operators often strive for buy-in from the local community, but Posada Amazonas goes further,” says Amanda Stronza, an assistant professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University. The partnership engages the local people as owners and decision makers, she says. As a result, the business gains valuable local knowledge and labor and the locals gain valuable… Environment, Economic Development, Arts, Culture, and Religion, Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-02-08T22:21:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/review_fugitive_denim/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/review_fugitive_denim/ FUGITIVE DENIM: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade Rachel Louise Snyder 288 pages (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007) A good way to understand the global nature of society is to look closely at one of its most mundane products – denim jeans. The Levi Strauss jeans that are on sale at the local Target store may trace their lineage to California’s gold fields, but today’s pair of pants is much more worldly. If each pair of jeans carried its own passport, it would likely bear stamps from such exotic locales as Uzbekistan and Bangladesh or India and Indonesia. Today, the denim jeans business is intimately connected to many of society’s most pressing global challenges: international trade, workers’ rights, pay equity, environmental degradation, poverty, overconsumption, and occupational safety, to name but a few. Rachel Louise Snyder’s engaging and important new book, Fugitive Denim, tells the story of globalization by tracing the life of a pair of jeans from the fashion houses that dream up the latest styles, to the fields where the cotton is grown, to the factories where the fabric is assembled. Along each step of the supply chain the author stops… Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-01-13T16:03:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/getting_human_rights_right/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/getting_human_rights_right/ In 1996, UNOCAL became the first corporation in U.S. history to go to trial for committing human rights abuses abroad. During the 1980s, the oil giant and its partners had hired local military forces in Burma, now called Myanmar, to secure a pipeline carrying natural gas from the Andaman Sea into Thailand. These army units forced locals to work on the pipeline; raped, robbed, and murdered civilians; and displaced entire villages.1 In U.S. federal and California state courts, peasants from Myanmar squared off with Unocal officials, accusing the oil giant of forced relocation, slave labor, rape, torture, and murder. The Supreme Court of California ruled in favor of the peasants, noting that Unocal “knew or should have known that the military did commit, was committing, and would continue to commit these tortuous acts.” After nearly a decade of litigation, the oil giant agreed to a secret multimillion-dollar settlement. Human rights abuses not only cause untold suffering in the communities where they take place, they also exact high costs from the corporations that perpetrate them. If Unocal had foretold how its actions in Myanmar would eventually affect its bottom line, the company might have avoided costly litigation and devastating press. More… Human Rights, Corporate Social Responsiblity 2008-01-03T23:52:00-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_responsibility_paradox/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_responsibility_paradox/ In Early 2007, thousands of cats and dogs in North America fell ill with kidney ailments. Many of the pets had dined chez Menu Foods Inc., a company in Ontario, Canada, that manufactures pet foods for more than 100 brands, including Procter & Gamble, Iams, Colgate-Palmolive’s Science Diet, and Wal-Mart’s Ol’ Roy. By mid-April, investigators had traced the animals’ illnesses to melamine, an industrial chemical that tainted a few of Menu Foods’ raw ingredients. They then followed the thread to two suppliers in China, which had spiked the ingredients to cut costs and boost profits. So where should the public point its finger? Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Wal-Mart, and the many other corporations that own the pet food brands? Menu Foods, which mixed the kibble? The Chinese manufacturers, which adulterated the ingredients? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which failed to detect anything amiss? The stores that didn’t remove the foods from the shelves, even after Menu Foods recalled them? Traditional notions of corporate social responsibility say that companies are beholden to the communities in which they are located. But globalization has made it difficult to discern exactly which communities to include. With far-flung value chains, decentralized governance, and churning… Human Rights, Corporate Social Responsiblity 2007-12-18T21:50:01-08:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/greening_supply_chains/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/greening_supply_chains/ Cobalt is the kind of resource that people don’t think about much until it isn’t around – which is what happened in the late 1970s. At that time, a rebellion in Zaire cut off access to the largest reserves of the metal, which is used in a host of products, including aircraft engines, turbines, and cutting tools. The shortage caused cobalt prices to rise 380 percent. To cope with the drop in supply and the uptick in price, firms unveiled a host of strategies. Mines in Zambia and Australia went into overdrive. Manufacturers substituted other elements. And various actors developed a recycling process that doubled the amount of cobalt recovered from alloys. By 1982, prices had returned to pre-rebellion levels. The case of cobalt illustrates that when firms know that resources are threatened, they quickly correct their course to protect their supply chains, write researchers in the Oct. 1, 2007, issue of Environmental Science & Technology. And in so doing, they often adopt more socially and environmentally sustainable practices such as conservation and recycling. “We are able to frame an otherwise environmentally motivated decision as a business case,” says Randolph Kirchain, one of the article’s authors and a professor of… Environment, Corporate Social Responsiblity 2007-12-14T23:27:01-08:00