Building the Ethical Reputation: Strategic CSR in Hospitality

When building a reputation as an ethical company, actions speak louder than words. Yet in most businesses, these actions are happening behind the scenes through employee, philanthropy and supply chain initiatives. If customers can’t see these actions, there’s minimal impact on perceptions, purchase and loyalty.
If you want your good intentions and efforts to [...]

CSR surviving cuts

From Financial Times today, a good article on how social responsibility is surviving the downturn. Cost savings and consumer expectations are the drivers that are keeping sustainability and fair trade high on exec’s priority lists.
They have worked out how to make it pay. Many of their initiatives help to cut costs or sustain supplies. They [...]

Fair criticism?

Last week I wrote about lessons learned from Liberty Mutual’s focus on responsibility. 24/7 Wall St provides some much better, albeit disappointing, examples in their list of top 10 greenwashers. GE, what on earth are you thinking? I have been searching for good examples of companies that are delivering corporate social opportunity (profitably aligning brand [...]

How to build the socially good brand

Whether you sit in marketing, CSR, supply chain, HR or the executive suite, you’re likely doing your part in ensuring your brand “does no evil” and perhaps even is doing some good. You can probably point to a laundry list of company initiatives from employee volunteer programs, fair labor practices, cause marketing, cradle to cradle [...]

Actions speak louder…

Diane Osgood at Business of a Better World points to two recent articles that she says “miss the point of corporate social reponsibility”… one in Financial Times that calls CSR “hot air” and the other in the Economist calling for a shakeout to “remove some of the froth.”
I have to respectfully disagree with Diane’s assessment. [...]