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Posts from the ‘Sustainability Reporting’ Category

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

May 2

magician

Consumers as Stakeholders in the Sustainable Century

A central and defining question in the Sustainable Century is how consumers as “stakeholders” can be engaged in a way that delivers the richness of our sustainability desires while shutting out blackguard marketers whose disinterest in the human condition threatens the hopes and dreams of a sustainable world.

Internet stakeholder consumer sustainability engagement is by and large a misnomer, rendered daily more meaningless, 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

Mar 13

sophie and mario

Using Sustainability Measurement Strategies for Bigger Sustainability Budgets, Value Enhancements, Returns and Impacts

In this sequel to  “To Measure or not to Measure: The Internal Dialogue of an Equivocating Manager “ you will find the deliberations of “Mario” and “Sofie”,  two smart, hard-working managers who, like dozens of my clients are trying their best to do more and better sustainability at their large national developing country firm.

As in To Measure or Not, I don’t know what all the “Marios” and “Sofias” say after they leave their  offices, but I imagine it goes something like this…..

Scene:  Dev Corp, Monterrey Mexico (note: in my experience you can insert any developing country name here) makers of electrical gear for both retail and wholesale.  Dev Corp is a supplier to several global companies and has four plants in Mexico and one in Colombia.

Mario: Is it hot in here, or is it just me?

Sofia: You not hot, you’re mad.

Mario: Yeah, you are right about that. This is the third time our community outreach program expansion proposal was shut down’.  Read more

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