Big Business and Sustainability: A Contradiction in Terms?

O'Riordan, Timothy. "Big Business and Sustainability: A Contradiction in Terms?." Environment, June 2006, 3.

As businesses strive to strike the delicate marketing balance between being user friendly and being green, they also are a lead player in the transition to sustainability. This is for a couple reasons, the first being that companies can afford to be patient and projecting over a 20-year lead time. The second reason is because politicians are slow to act when the items they are pushing won’t see results for many years to come. They want a quick return on their investment of time and energy. Big business must be a partner in the movement to sustainability because they can influence politicians. And if businesses are keeping their customers happy with sustainable products they will lean on the politicians to create new, even more sustainable, legislation with new regulations. This shows that if companies can come up with the right scenario that people will be willing to give sustainable options a try even at an added cost, but not until they receive something in return.

Working for the greater good?

Altman, Wilf. "Working for the greater good? [corporate social responsibility]." Engineering Management 17, no. 6 (December 2007): 12-15.

Even in these most difficult of economic times CSR is becoming a key component in business contributing to the competitiveness and creating new opportunities. It is moving companies past a base of legal compliance to integrating sustainable behavior into their core values because they are realizing the benefits of doing so. Companies today such as Caterpillar are demonstrating that a strong focus on social responsibility and sustaining the environment can contribute to delivering strong financial results and create profitable growth opportunities. Caterpillar was recently added to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index which recognizes companies that led their industries in corporate social responsibility. Another sign of the growing interest in CSR is the formation of the European Alliance for CSR, launched by the European Commission. Another indication that adoption of CSR practices is spreading is that many of the most admired companies according to Fortune are those which take CSR most seriously. CSR social responsibility reports are increasingly demanded by customers and investors who want to understand financial risk and opportunities but also how the company conducts its business. CSR activities are increasingly seen as a way of managing risk and protecting corporate reputations. Effectiveness and success of CSR initiatives is based on gaining a commitment at all levels of the company, from the ground up. There has recently developed a CSR Academy in the UK which, in turn, developed the CSR Competency Framework. It is a structure by which companies can use to integrate CSR, or to review its CSR processes.