Only 3% of the world’s largest companies report on the first generation of sustainability indicators according to Corporate Knights report on Trends in Sustainability Disclosure. The seven indicators are: employee turnover, energy, greenhouse gases (GHGs), lost-time injury rate, payroll, waste and water. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, Corporate Knights recommends mandatory disclosure because voluntary disclosure is plainly …
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Category:3 The World of Money
Make the new CEO an intern first.
This sounds like a really good idea. “Experience matters? The Impact of Prior CEO Experience on Firm Performance” discusses research by Monika Hamori of the IE Business School in Spain and Burack Koyuncu of the NEOMA Business School in France which indicates that “past performance is not an indicator of future success”. That sounds like …
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Divest fossil fuel holdings, or die.
That’s a big picture perspective, presented starkly to attract some attention. Sadly, few people feel the pressure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. Let’s have a look at some of the detail. A 2012 article in Rolling Stone , by Bill McKibben of 350.org, galvanised a fossil fuel divestment campaign …
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It’s not easy to do the right thing.
So, I must confess that for three years we let a field to a neighbour for use in conventional tillage farming. Previously, that field had been managed organically for over a decade, but we found we could not use it and the rent money would be welcome. Now, we’re regalvanised to protect the environment and …
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The power of emotional intelligence in a cognitive world.
Breathe to focus. It sounds simple, even foolish, but it’s not. Daniel Goleman recently gave a presentation on his new book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, which was reviewed by IMD. Goleman explains why attention is a little-noticed mental asset that makes a huge difference in how well we find our way in our …
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The “Syndrome of Disavowed Yearning”
It’s a weird idea, but something about disavowed and yearning had some truth in it. Sometimes you wonder if celebrities and successful people are happy. Sometimes it is easy to wonder if it is possible to have friends when someone is so popular or attractive. Life must be intense. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to imagine …
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The what, why and why not of bitcoin
David Webb recently published a review of bit coin written with a non-technical perspective. It is a useful insight and suggests that maybe bitcoin is not the currency of the future, though it is interesting. Have a look at The hole in Bitcoin here.
Measuring ethics in business.
When we started managing portfolios with an ethical and socially responsible objective having a pre-screened universe of stocks saved a lot of initial work reviewing every listed company to see how green and clean it was. In 1999, we came across the Domini 400 which was a great place to start. It was focussed on …
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Wall Street taking more money out of your pockets
Apparently a bunch of Wall Street executives is suing JP Morgan for a few billion, alleging fraud concerning sub-prime mortgages. This happened to AIG too. The trouble is that the executives who committed the fraud are not indicted and have suffered little if any consequence of their alleged criminal fraud. It is the people owning …
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Big company CEOs earned 275X the typical employee.
That’s a huge difference. And it’s not the difference between the top and the bottom, it’s the difference between the average and the average of the bosses. According to a report in The New Yorker, in 1965 big company CEOs earned 20X the typical employee; today it’s 275X. In terms of productivity and value added, …
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