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Posts from the ‘Global Economy’ Category

May 21

agrione

Dull? Maybe. But Building a Better GRI is Vital to More & Better Corporate Sustainability

Blogging from GRI Global Conference on Sustainability and Reporting in Amsterdam

The word ‘audit’ is derived from the Latin word “audire” which means “to hear” — an apt etymology in the movement for more and better corporate sustainability, where stakeholder interests are so closely and vitally linked to good sustainability reporting.

We, the stakeholders, increasingly want to hear what companies are doing, or not doing, on sustainability issues and, of course, we want to understand, not only what companies are reporting on but critically how they report.

Just as the audited financial statement rose Read more

May 17

2013-05-15 19.21.48

PRIORITIES, PRIORITIES , PRIORITIES – Does your Sustainability Strategy Do More Than Just Include the Words Social and Economic

Pushed by horrific tragedies such as the deaths of over 1,100 people in a Bangladeshi textile industry, the personal values market, or the marketplace of consumer ideas and concerns, is constantly expressing greater demand for companies to address social and economic – and not just environmental — sustainability issues.

This is good news for sustainability but challenging for sustainability managers many of whom already feel they are fighting too many fires on the sustainability front as it is.

It’s about Priorities
On the wall by my desk I have a set of themes printed on big bits of paper, Read more

May 8

stairs

The Price of a Life in Bangladesh: Future Markets, Hedging and other Market-Based Mechanisms to Profit from Sustainability

I have a new idea to finance sustainability: a futures market trading the value of the life of Bangladeshi textile workers.

 ”Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as
to conceive how others can be in want.”
Jonathan Swift

A Bangladeshi Low-Income Workers Exchange (BLIWEx) makes a whole lot of sense. The idea is to Read more

Apr 19

big bank

It the Game, Not Just the Players: Royal Bank of Canada and Consumers Complicit with Drive to Low Wage Outsourcing

I was visiting a hospital in Canada the other day and overheard health care workers joking about their wages, saying “she was a low-income patient…. Heck we are all low-income now a days… there is no such thing as a middle class job.”

In the wake of the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC), understandable, yet inexcusable gaff managing the outsourcing of some 45 IT jobs to iGATE Indian employees, one has to wonder if these nurses might not be right.

But who’s to blame?  And what is a company to do about it? Read more

Feb 19

vatican

The New S & P – What a New Pope Can do for Sustainability

In one of my earliest blogs I lied and now I am confessing.

I lied when I wrote anything can be measured…. and that’s why the next Pope needs to declare all Catholics, indeed all Christians, accept sustainability as a central and inalienable spiritual tenant.

More than Stewards
Pretty much everyone knows all major religions, in some way or another and to various degrees, support the notion of sustainability.  But while one could argue Read more

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