Corporate Citizenship

“You saw the row about top people’s pay? You didn’t? Don’t worry! There’ll be another one along any minute now”
The latest row was sparked off by Mark Serwotka, the thinking girl’s Bob Crowe. He is right to raise the issue. Public sector pay is frozen but that it is bonanza time for top dogs at [...]

Corporate Citizenship’s Knowledge Series event on Business and Biodiversity this morning highlighted the important, but often poorly understood, linkages between businesses and the goods and services they rely on from the natural world – which are by all accounts increasingly scarce and/or damaged.
We were privileged to be joined by Annelisa Grigg from Globalbalance, Pippa Howard [...]

We have been working with Indonesia’s largest palm oil company Golden Agri, which has been at the centre of a world wide campaign by Greenpeace about de-forestation. We have been providing advice and guidance on its approach to sustainability and stakeholder engagement.
In February the company announced a long term partnership with The Forest Trust to [...]

Scotland announced on Friday that it was introducing a new “carbon metric” to guide recycling in the country. But does focusing on carbon risk ignore wider environmental impacts?
It seems like an interesting way forward, but I have to admit some concerns. I should also admit at this point to having only read the Executive Summary [...]

In the last year, food prices have soared across all key staples, as illustrated by the price of coffee, which has almost doubled in the last 12 months. The FAO food price index recently reached its highest since record began in 1990.  
This has prompted many people to ask: “if prices are going up, surely this [...]

You don’t have to be in the Joe Stalin Fan Club to think governments should have a plan; or, more accurately, a declared and consistent direction of travel. Add a few, broad indicators to measure progress and some incentives (concentrate on the price mechanism please not Brown-esque micro-management) and you are there.
Even the government’s most [...]

Your company has created its corporate responsibility strategy and is embedding the strategy throughout the company.  You are ready to actively pursue external recognition, but how? 
External validation is a valuable instrument for educating the public about the strength of your company’s corporate responsibility program.  With the number of ratings and rankings in existence, it can [...]

What do Nestle, higher food prices, the Middle East crisis and Boeing, all have in common?
The linkages are not immediately obvious, but with companies as distinct as Nestle and Boeing representing opposite sides of the biofuels debate, it becomes abundantly clear that the arguments are complex and that there are no easy fixes to some [...]

The self-declared ‘supercharged’ Climate Week is upon us, and I am mortified to admit I didn’t know anything about it – until 20 minutes ago. However, what are familiar, are the complaints by ‘green groups’ about the involvement of particular corporate partners, in this case, RBS. It reminds me of the annual ruckus about sponsorship [...]

On last night’s 10 O Clock News Stephanie Flanders, the BBC’s high priestess of economic gloom, announced that 94% of the new jobs created over the last twelve months had gone to men. 44% had gone to over 65s. I almost choked on my mug of cocoa. She interviewed a 70 year-old accountant who said [...]