Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Supply Chain’ Category

Sep 20

jeans

End Supply Chain Abuse: Make GRI and Sustainability Labels the Law

I struggled today as I put on my jeans. All I could think of was the 300 workers who died in a Karachi textile factory two weeks ago.

Separated by distance and culture, sometimes it’s hard to feel for the nameless poor that make our clothes, our electronics, our food. But this morning, I could not help but imagine their names, their hopes, how they lived, the faces of their children and of their families.

Their deaths were as tragic as they were avoidable. The owners of the factory have fled in shame and fear, but left behind over $5 million in bank accounts. It makes me cry to think of what small portion of this Read more

Jun 1

csramericas-94x94

Reflexiones sobre CSR Américas – Tres Articulos en Español

CSR Americas – 21 de Mayo de 2012

Apoyar a mi staff a organizar el stand para su montaje en la conferencia de CSR Américas 2012, la más grande convención de RSE en América Latina, siempre es una experiencia excepcional. La convención crea un marco ideal para percibir la pasión de diversos ejecutivos que buscan soluciones a sus problemas de RSE, el interés de funcionarios de gobierno en aprovechar el poder del sector empresarial para el bienestar de los ciudadanos, el ánimo de los estudiantes para explorar como pueden contribuir a una vida y un mundo sustentable, o Read more

May 23

csramericas

CSR Americas

At a conference of 600 people or so, your incoming intelligence is limited by the number and type of people you meet. And who you meet is pretty much limited to luck, or as my wife would say the synchronicity of fate.

Here just a sample of things and thoughts fate brought my way today at CSR in the Americas. Read more

Feb 7

law-2

Three Laws of CSR

In most fields of inquiry or practice there are certain observable understandings that develop over time to become “laws.

There are many “laws” in business and just like those in physics you can pretty much rely on them to be true, and one can observe them or not at their own peril.

One of the most well-known is Murphy’s Law: If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.”

Another is the Peter Principle which states “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence”

CSR is no exception, and after twenty years of working in this field, I have observed the following laws: Read more

Jan 8

fat cat bankers

Financial Institutions, Supply Chains and Corporate Social Responsibility

Stop Payment by Christopher Ketcham in Harper’s January 2012 edition’s reports on a slow brewing homeowner’s revolt against banks as millions of foreclosures resulting from the 2008 financial meltdown work their way through courts.

As a former credit union Treasurer and banker for a socially responsible bank, I remember long, intense conversations about bank culpability and the financial industry’s utter failure to serve the needs of their stakeholders, and in doing so, causing the second largest economic crisis in modern times.

Ketcham’s article reminded me of some thoughts I wrote down in early 2009 on the crisis which I offer up as a retrospective, unedited from its original form (and predictions!!).

Read more

Page 1 of 11

Switch to our mobile site