The Magazine of Corporate Responsibility

Archive for December, 2011

Freedom Riders’ Legacy: Creating a Culture of Common Purpose

December 2011 brings to a close the official commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders. Columnist Gael O’Brien suggests that the experience of these 1960s civil rights activists offers inspiration – and some very practical lessons – to those seeking to create common purpose in 21st century organizations and companies.

The Champion of Painkillers

Overdoses caused by narcotics painkillers now kill nearly 15,000 people a year — more than heroin and cocaine combined. But the pills continue to have a champion in the American Pain Foundation, which describes itself as the U.S.’s largest advocacy group for pain patients. Its message: The risk of addiction is overblown, and the drugs are underused. What the nonprofit doesn’t highlight is the money behind that message.

Culture Kills: The Legacy of Massey Energy

In April 2010, 29 miners died in Massey’s Upper Big Branch (UBB), the worst mining disaster in 40 years. On December 6, 2011, the U.S. Department of Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) issued a 1,000 page report of its investigation into the UBB tragedy. Alpha Natural Resources, which bought Massey earlier this year, agreed to pay $209 million in penalties (civil, criminal and restitution) for Massey Energy’s role in the explosion.

Why No Financial Crisis Prosecutions? ‘It’s Just too Hard’

Years after the financial crisis, there have still been no prosecutions of top executives at the major players in the financial crisis. Why’s that? Well, according to a now-departed Justice Department official who used to be in charge of investigating such matters, the Justice Department has decided that holding top Wall Street executives criminally accountable is too difficult a task.

Manifesto for the Corporate Idealist

While daily news headlines can sometimes make it easy to assume that big business is incapable of doing good in the world, contributor Christine Bader argues that there exists a “global army” of Corporate Idealists hard at work on a host of environmental and social issues. She offers the beginnings of a Manifesto to help support that army – “an outline of the principles and actions that will help us better align the interests of business and society.”

What is ‘Slow Money’?

“Slow Money” is the name for a movement started by socially conscious investing pioneer and author, Woody Tasch, who essentially borrowed the conceptual framework of “Slow Food”—whereby participants eschew convenience-oriented “fast” foods, instead filling up their plates with traditional, unprocessed and, ideally, locally produced foods—and applied it to personal finance and investing.

JP Morgan:Impact Investing Offers Trillion Dollar Opportunity

A study by analysts at J.P. Morgan concludes that impact investing – which is intended to generate social good as well as financial return – could represent a highly-profitable trillion dollar market over the next decade. “In fact, we believe that impact investing will reveal itself to be one of the most powerful changes within the asset management industry in the years to come,” the study says.

Scandalous Leadership and Organization Culture: A Theme Runs Through It

While there’s no excuse for recent leadership scandals, Art Stewart writes, “it is also irresponsible to dismiss outright our own role in engendering a culture of duplicity, incompetence, and corruption as if it all could manifest from unsupported solo acts.”