FAVORITE BOOKS
PMAP Newsletter
May, 2006
By Moje Ramos-Aquino, FPM
MANAGING FOR THE LONG RUN: Lessons in competitive advantage from great family businesses
By Danny Miller & Isabelle Le Breton-Miller
Harvard Business School Press
CORPORATIONS AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST: Guiding the invisible hand
By Steven Lyndenberg
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
THE PEOPLE BUSINESS: Controlling corporations and restoring democracy
By Lee Drutman & Charlie Cray
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Hallmark. Walmart. Bechtel Group. Levi Strauss. IKEA. Nordstrom. S.C. Johnson. Estee Lauder. L.L. Bean. Cargill. Michelin. The New York Times Company. Coors Brewing Company.
These companies are known mostly as successful family businesses. A not so known fact is that they also generously make social contributions and connect to the inside and outside communities.
Based on an in-depth, multiyear research study, the Millers draw from the experiences of family-run firms to reveal four unorthodox business priorities that any firm, family or not, can use to drive successful strategies:
• Take command: Act as an unfettered steward rather than a servant to shareholders
• Ensure continuity: pursue a lasting mission of substance, not a dollar-driven strategy
• Create a community: nurture a caring collective, not a tournament
• Build connections: secure generous relationships with outsiders instead of one-shot bargains.
These organizations attribute their success to being a good neighbor and partner to their employees, suppliers, clients, value-chain partners, providers of capital and the larger community. These winning organizations build cohesive, gung-ho community of employees. They have kept their people on during recessions, depression and war, when revenues were abysmal.
Likewise, they are benevolent business partners to their suppliers, co-contractors and financiers. They are meticulously honest in their dealings and, many times, deliver more than promised.
They also connect to the market via the socially responsible image they create. They give back to the community that has treated them so well and they view this as an obligation, not as a favor. They do philanthropic or pro bono community work because they believed it was the right thing to do.
In the end, these responsive and solicitous organizations reap untold advantages such as enhanced image of responsible citizenship that brings in clients, public support and eager superior job applicants; more loyal partners with whom they have useful interchange of privileged information that can be a basis for further business; access to resources and business; and many more.
As Earl of My Name is Earl on Jack TV would say, “Do good and good things happen. Do bad and it will come back to haunt you.”
Author Steven Lyndenberg writes that the shifting of assets and power from government to business has led to shift in the public’s expectations of what both government and corporations should do. This shift has also led to unemployment, labor unrest, disparities between the rich and poor created by the markets and their regular cycles of boom and bust. In the past, the proven solution was government supervision, but governments today can not easily return to many of the forms of ownership, price regulation, and direct market control that they have recently abandoned. Thereby, government needs to create new mechanisms to protect certain basic public interests.
There is now a growing interest in socially responsible investing (SRI) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). SRI and CSR are the new invisible guiding hand in the marketplace that operate at the intersections of market value and societal values, profits and wealth, self-interests and public concerns. “But only a concerted effort by government—with the active support of investors, consumers, workers, the general public, and corporations themselves—can bring them into being. Bringing this about will require new data, new organizations to analyze that data, public debate about the data’s significance, and the creation of consequences flowing from this analysis and debate.”
Currently, millions of immigrants, legal or illegal, workers in the USA are making headway forcing US Congress to heed their demand for their right to work and live in the USA.
Authors Drutman and Cray write that The People’s Business is about what ordinary citizens can do to curtail corporate power. They consider a wide spectrum of approaches—from fundamental shifts in how corporations are created and operate, to minor adjustments in corporate governance and regulatory fixes that directly address specific harms.
The authors speak to growing societal concerns about corporate power. They present a vision of society in which the rights of individuals are more important than the rights of corporations, in which generating public prosperity is the driving purpose of corporations, and in which the values of human dignity and community are more sacred than the corporate drumbeat of financial profit above all else. More importantly, they provide a guide to creating a sustainable society where we, the people, have the power.
If our people power toppled the governments of Messrs Marcos and Estrada, we could surely bring down business organizations that are callous and inimical to public interests and the society’s good. The HR professionals and managers could definitely influence their company in becoming better citizens before the people flex their power.
Bookshelf
PROTECTING YOUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
By Deborah E. Bouchoux
AMACOM
BE YOUR OWN BRAND: A breakthrough formula for standing out from the crowd
By David McNally &U Karl D. Speak
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
NO! How one simple word can transform your life
By Jana Kemp
AMACOM
PERFECT PHRASES FOR EXECUTIVE PRESENTATIONS
By Alan M. Perlman, Ph.D.
The McGraw-Hill Companies
2600 PHRASES FOR EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE REVIEWS
By Paul Falcone
The McGraw-Hill Companies
Showing posts with label corporate social responsibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corporate social responsibility. Show all posts
Thursday, May 4, 2006
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
3 Books on Corporate Social Responsibility
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF CAPITAL: Dethroning the corporate aristocracy
Marjorie Kelly
(Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, 2003)
THE ART OF CAUSE MARKETING: How to use advertising to change personal behavior and public policy
Richard Earle
(Mc-Graw Hill, 2000)
THE ANSWER TO HOW IS YES: Acting on what matters
Peter Block
(Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, 2002)
Are business organizations relevant and beneficial to society given the social ills (wealth inequality, wealth privilege, corporate welfare, industrial pollution and many others) they generate and perpetuate? Author Marjorie Kelly states: “The underlying illness is shareholder primacy, the drive to make profits for the shareholders, no matter who pays the cost. In the interest of making the rich richer, corporations are in effect levying absurd private taxes on the rest of us. Financial powers have become an economic aristocracy. Wealth controls not only corporations but also government.”
“Today, among the world’s one hundred largest economies, fifty-one are corporations. They have revenues larger than nation-states, yet maintain the guise of being the ‘private property’ of shareholders. Ownership function has shrunk to virtually one dimension: extracting wealth.”
That is why there is a growing pressure on business to contribute towards economic democracy and social change, to fulfill the social purpose that was the original reason for their existence and to be part of the solution to social ills, rather than the problem.
These changes need to be more than cosmetic, dole outs and public relations projects. Kelly articulates the need for a new economic ideal of sustainable prosperity for all with fundamental system reform and building a world of economic liberty and justice for all.
Kelly suggests six principles for economic democracy:
1. Enlightenment: Because all persons are created equal, the economic rights of employees and the community are equal to those of capital owners.
2. Equality: Under market principles, wealth does not legitimately belong only to stockholders. Corporate wealth belongs to those who create it, and community wealth belongs to all.
3. Public good: As semipublic governments, public corporations are more than pieces of private property or private contracts. They have a responsibility to the public good.
4. Democracy: The democracy is a human community, and like the larger community of which it is a part, it is best governed democratically.
5. Justice: In keeping with equal treatment of persons before the law, wealthy persons may not claim greater rights than others, and corporations may not claim the right s of persons.
6. (r)Evolution: As it is the right of the people to alter or abolish government, it is the right of people to alter or abolish the corporations that now govern the world.
This book is a stirring, albeit disturbing, reminder and guide for HR when they design and implement democratic and economic change projects. It appeals to the soul.
This whole Lenten Week (Maundy Thursday and Good Friday even!) I was enraged to receive incessant calls from banks, in particular, urging me to get their credit cards and loan products!!!!! Also, the internet and mass media (most newspapers took a rest on Good Friday) did not seem to take a solemn pause this week and continued business as usual.
Indeed every day, we are bombarded by savvy social marketers that prey on our vulnerabilities and make us buy things we do not need. Not to mention advertisements and commercials that insult the intelligences and sensitivities and destroy value systems.
And now comes cause marketing and cause branding that “contribute for the public good.” Author Richard Earle recalls his experience working at Benton & Bowles agency, “I realized then and there that it was possible to use the techniques of marketing in a way that could have an important and beneficial impact on the public—a result that had nothing to do with detergent or analgesic market share.”
Earle defines cause marketing as advertising in the service of the public. It consists of using the skills of advertising to effect social change, to benefit individuals or society at large. He writes, “Cause marketing seeks to impact personal behavior in a number of ways, including persuading the target to:
avoid or discontinue to risky practices like smoking, drug abuse or unprotected sex
discontinue antisocial actions such as littering or being careless with campfires
seek counseling for destructive behavior such as compulsive gambling or spousal abuse
take preventative measures such as getting inoculated, reducing cholesterol intake, or fastening a safety belt
seek out and use information about various diseases
reexamine personal attitudes toward issues like race and sexual preference
identify and take action against inhumane or discriminatory practices
organize, join or give financial support to groups that benefit society
become involved in community activities such as mentoring and monitoring neighborhood crime
Earle asserts that cause marketing can also help create or change public policy, inform about and create action on behalf of a cause.
And, may I add, the idea of stewardship and preservation of the natural environment. Indeed, advertisements and commercials are potent tools for expressing corporate social responsibility. HR can work with top management and their marketing and sales units to make this happen.
I am sure that HR people are now asking, “How?” Who, where and when do we even begin?
Author Peter Block asserts that the work it takes to act on what matters is up to each of us as individuals. “My individual possibility needs to be part of a collective possibility through the concept of social architecture. The task of the social architect is to design and bring into being organizations that serve both the marketplace and the soul of the people who work within them. Where the architect designs physical space, the social architect designs social space.”
Earle writes that certain capacities are required by social architects:
1. Convening: How people gather. Focus on who is in the room. Care for the physical space of the room in which you meet. Include high-interaction activities. Design airspace so that all voices can be heard. Aim at capacities and strengths.
2. Naming the Question: Define the context, the playing field, and the right question to start with. Identify needs of all stakeholders. Stay with questions of purpose, feeling and relationships. Keep broadening the questions. Postpone the How? question.
3. Initiating New Conversations for Learning: We change the world when we create the time and space for heartfelt, unique conversations that discuss values and affirm doubts, feelings and intuition. Support idealism, intimacy and depth. Use high-contact and human being-based learning strategies.
4. Sticking with Strategies of Engagement and Consent: Talk the implications through. Establish commitment and accountability. Decide who should be in the room at various stages and what questions they should confront, and all while keeping to the ground rule that he questions of intent and purpose precede the questions of methodology.
5. Designing Strategies that Support Local Choice: If our intent is to create social systems that people want to inhabit, then the social architect’s job is to demand that the inhabitants join in designing the system. Some call this “participative design.” It may take longer, but the alternative is to be efficient in choosing a plan that will not be supported.
HR could expand their horizon and make their corporate life meaningful by taking on the lead of their organization’s aiming for economic democracy and social change. These books are helpful in that they detail the what, why, who, when, where and how.
Bookshelf
151 QUICK IDEAS TO INSPIRE YOUR STAFF
Jerry R. Wilson, CSP
(Career Press, 2005)
TEN RULES FOR STRATEGIC INNOVATORS
Vijay Govindarajan & Cris Timble
(Harvard Business School Press, 2005)
THE PERSON WHO CHANGED MY LIFE
Matilda Raffa Cuomo
(Book-of-the-Month Club, 2002)
Marjorie Kelly
(Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, 2003)
THE ART OF CAUSE MARKETING: How to use advertising to change personal behavior and public policy
Richard Earle
(Mc-Graw Hill, 2000)
THE ANSWER TO HOW IS YES: Acting on what matters
Peter Block
(Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, 2002)
Are business organizations relevant and beneficial to society given the social ills (wealth inequality, wealth privilege, corporate welfare, industrial pollution and many others) they generate and perpetuate? Author Marjorie Kelly states: “The underlying illness is shareholder primacy, the drive to make profits for the shareholders, no matter who pays the cost. In the interest of making the rich richer, corporations are in effect levying absurd private taxes on the rest of us. Financial powers have become an economic aristocracy. Wealth controls not only corporations but also government.”
“Today, among the world’s one hundred largest economies, fifty-one are corporations. They have revenues larger than nation-states, yet maintain the guise of being the ‘private property’ of shareholders. Ownership function has shrunk to virtually one dimension: extracting wealth.”
That is why there is a growing pressure on business to contribute towards economic democracy and social change, to fulfill the social purpose that was the original reason for their existence and to be part of the solution to social ills, rather than the problem.
These changes need to be more than cosmetic, dole outs and public relations projects. Kelly articulates the need for a new economic ideal of sustainable prosperity for all with fundamental system reform and building a world of economic liberty and justice for all.
Kelly suggests six principles for economic democracy:
1. Enlightenment: Because all persons are created equal, the economic rights of employees and the community are equal to those of capital owners.
2. Equality: Under market principles, wealth does not legitimately belong only to stockholders. Corporate wealth belongs to those who create it, and community wealth belongs to all.
3. Public good: As semipublic governments, public corporations are more than pieces of private property or private contracts. They have a responsibility to the public good.
4. Democracy: The democracy is a human community, and like the larger community of which it is a part, it is best governed democratically.
5. Justice: In keeping with equal treatment of persons before the law, wealthy persons may not claim greater rights than others, and corporations may not claim the right s of persons.
6. (r)Evolution: As it is the right of the people to alter or abolish government, it is the right of people to alter or abolish the corporations that now govern the world.
This book is a stirring, albeit disturbing, reminder and guide for HR when they design and implement democratic and economic change projects. It appeals to the soul.
This whole Lenten Week (Maundy Thursday and Good Friday even!) I was enraged to receive incessant calls from banks, in particular, urging me to get their credit cards and loan products!!!!! Also, the internet and mass media (most newspapers took a rest on Good Friday) did not seem to take a solemn pause this week and continued business as usual.
Indeed every day, we are bombarded by savvy social marketers that prey on our vulnerabilities and make us buy things we do not need. Not to mention advertisements and commercials that insult the intelligences and sensitivities and destroy value systems.
And now comes cause marketing and cause branding that “contribute for the public good.” Author Richard Earle recalls his experience working at Benton & Bowles agency, “I realized then and there that it was possible to use the techniques of marketing in a way that could have an important and beneficial impact on the public—a result that had nothing to do with detergent or analgesic market share.”
Earle defines cause marketing as advertising in the service of the public. It consists of using the skills of advertising to effect social change, to benefit individuals or society at large. He writes, “Cause marketing seeks to impact personal behavior in a number of ways, including persuading the target to:
avoid or discontinue to risky practices like smoking, drug abuse or unprotected sex
discontinue antisocial actions such as littering or being careless with campfires
seek counseling for destructive behavior such as compulsive gambling or spousal abuse
take preventative measures such as getting inoculated, reducing cholesterol intake, or fastening a safety belt
seek out and use information about various diseases
reexamine personal attitudes toward issues like race and sexual preference
identify and take action against inhumane or discriminatory practices
organize, join or give financial support to groups that benefit society
become involved in community activities such as mentoring and monitoring neighborhood crime
Earle asserts that cause marketing can also help create or change public policy, inform about and create action on behalf of a cause.
And, may I add, the idea of stewardship and preservation of the natural environment. Indeed, advertisements and commercials are potent tools for expressing corporate social responsibility. HR can work with top management and their marketing and sales units to make this happen.
I am sure that HR people are now asking, “How?” Who, where and when do we even begin?
Author Peter Block asserts that the work it takes to act on what matters is up to each of us as individuals. “My individual possibility needs to be part of a collective possibility through the concept of social architecture. The task of the social architect is to design and bring into being organizations that serve both the marketplace and the soul of the people who work within them. Where the architect designs physical space, the social architect designs social space.”
Earle writes that certain capacities are required by social architects:
1. Convening: How people gather. Focus on who is in the room. Care for the physical space of the room in which you meet. Include high-interaction activities. Design airspace so that all voices can be heard. Aim at capacities and strengths.
2. Naming the Question: Define the context, the playing field, and the right question to start with. Identify needs of all stakeholders. Stay with questions of purpose, feeling and relationships. Keep broadening the questions. Postpone the How? question.
3. Initiating New Conversations for Learning: We change the world when we create the time and space for heartfelt, unique conversations that discuss values and affirm doubts, feelings and intuition. Support idealism, intimacy and depth. Use high-contact and human being-based learning strategies.
4. Sticking with Strategies of Engagement and Consent: Talk the implications through. Establish commitment and accountability. Decide who should be in the room at various stages and what questions they should confront, and all while keeping to the ground rule that he questions of intent and purpose precede the questions of methodology.
5. Designing Strategies that Support Local Choice: If our intent is to create social systems that people want to inhabit, then the social architect’s job is to demand that the inhabitants join in designing the system. Some call this “participative design.” It may take longer, but the alternative is to be efficient in choosing a plan that will not be supported.
HR could expand their horizon and make their corporate life meaningful by taking on the lead of their organization’s aiming for economic democracy and social change. These books are helpful in that they detail the what, why, who, when, where and how.
Bookshelf
151 QUICK IDEAS TO INSPIRE YOUR STAFF
Jerry R. Wilson, CSP
(Career Press, 2005)
TEN RULES FOR STRATEGIC INNOVATORS
Vijay Govindarajan & Cris Timble
(Harvard Business School Press, 2005)
THE PERSON WHO CHANGED MY LIFE
Matilda Raffa Cuomo
(Book-of-the-Month Club, 2002)
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