Introductory Post

I aim for this blog to be a place to learn and have meaningful discussions about corporate social responsibility. Too often people dismiss the concepts of CSR without taking the time to analyze what is being accomplished and without realizing that money can be still be made for shareholders - sometimes more than what is being made - when more responsible business practices are undertaken.

What do I mean when I speak of CSR? I doubt I will give a complete answer at this point. It will be made more and more complete as I learn more myself. I believe CSR can involve any or all of the following:

• environmental-friendliness;
• fairness (at least) to employees in terms of pay, benefits and working conditions;
  
• fair pay and working conditions for suppliers (e.g. coffee growers); and
  
• good community citizenry (e.g. supporting education in the community)

As I said, there are other examples that will surely be mentioned.

I will bring examples of companies who have been or are trying to be successful employing some of these concepts by posting links to articles out there. I will also post information about those that are failing or have failed when I see those.

There seems to be and increase in articles written about CSR as time goes by. My hope is that we will all learn something from these articles and from each other and can apply them in our own business world. I'd like to leave the first post with something I read recently by Bill McKibben in a recent issue of YES!: "We don't know if the solutions we're building now, even the finest ones, will still make sense in a millenium. But we don't need to worry about millenia, not yet. If we could slow down the momentum of our helter-skelter world just enough to let us see a mildly plausible future for our children and then their children, that would be an enormous victory." Enjoy.