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 According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, up to 90% of small businesses get the majority of their business from within two miles of their front doors. In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, the U.S. Chamber Foundation’s Business Civic Leadership Center (BCLC) estimates that between 60,000 and 100,000 small businesses have already been negatively impacted and as many as 30% of them will fail in the coming months.

 Internet freedom, human rights, trust, transparency and youth programs were just a few of the issues discussed at the 2012 COMMIT!Forum this past October in New York City. The speakers –CEOs, government leaders, policy-makers and heads of non-profit organizations – noted in the follow-up interviews that the Forum allowed them to engage the 700-person audience in how important these issues are to business leaders and their stakeholders. 

  Over 600 CEOs, heads of corporate responsibility, sustainability officers, investment analysts, NGO and government leaders, and academics gathered in New York City in October to attend the COMMIT!Forum where they discussed the future of corporate responsibility and the challenges their companies faced when trying to implement CSR initiatives. Following the forum, attendees offered their comments and reflections and talked about their biggest “Aha!” moment at the forum. 

Hershey Foods Teams with Former Olympian Carl Lewis to Teach Kids Fitness and Moderation

I wrote a column a few weeks ago about corporate fitness and wellness programs. I decried the lack of planning “responsible” companies were directing at the health of their employees in the area of wellness. Shortly after the article ran I received a call from a Hershey’s representative about programs they were running to instill healthy values in kids. The spokesperson for the program was none other than Carl Lewis, the great Olympian who was voted the “Olympian of the Century” for the Twentieth Century by none other than the International Olympic Committee.

Often, government looks to the private sector for best practice ideas regarding operational efficiency, cost reductions, and technical innovation. An emerging new approach to industry collaboration taps into the consciousness of corporate responsibility to meet very specific needs.

The concept of corporate responsibility covers a broad spectrum of corporate “give back” including governance, social responsibility, philanthropy and, most recently sustainability.  Generally, corporate responsibility focuses on an individual organization’s relationship with its community, stakeholders, and customers, and the way in which it contributes to the world around it beyond profit and shareholder value -- sharing and contributing to something bigger than the immediate economic well being of the organization. 

I’m part of an endangered species. We used to roam the wide plains of the Midwest and the open spaces of the American Southwest in vast herds. We could be found in thriving clusters throughout New England. Sadly now, we’ve been culled, driven out, and hunted as RhINOs.

I speak, of course, of that ever rarer creature, the publicly-declared moderate Republican. Derided as RhINOs (Republicans In Name Only) or driven into hiding, I know we’re still out there. I also know there are Democrats who don’t believe that everyone who disagrees with them is automatically a hick, racist, or ignorant, and who don’t feel businesses just exist to be blamed, milked, or nationalized.

Those of us in the “radical middle” need to come out of hiding...

 There is a lot of anecdotal information on what makes a sustainable value chain, but very little data, so we partnered with ASQ and ISM, with the help of Deloitte, earlier this year on a multi-year research study to identify proven management practices and cost-saving approaches, and the initial findings are out!

The following guest post is part of a CSRHub series focusing on 10 trends that are driving corporate transparency and disclosure in the coming year.

How many US companies do you think have positions that include the word “sustainability” in their job title? Would you guess 100? 1,000? According to ZoomInfo, the answer is 12,660 This statistic proves that sustainability jobs exist, but does not necessarily prove that there is an established career path within the sustainability profession.

What makes a corporate responsibility (CR) program successful? Do an organization’s structure, staffing, budget impact success in achieving goals? What’s the effect of executive engagement in CR?

These are just a few of the questions CR Magazine and NYSE-Euronext have sought to answer over the past couple of years of research into CR practices.Thanks to strong response from the CR community, we’ve learned a few things about the state of corporate citizenship...