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Posted June 25, 2010

By Phillip Clawson, Managing Director, Community Matters Group

If you are a Corporate Responsibility Officer, this could be your worst nightmare… you’ve spent years building CR initiatives at your company, and then overnight, a crisis arises in some other part of the company (an area over which you have no authority) that seems to undo all of the good you’ve done. I should know; it’s happened to me! (More on that later.)

New Global Action Network to train multinationals’ suppliers in reporting

In a push for transparency and accountability, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) launched a new network to promote sustainability in multinational corporations’ supply chains.

The GRI Global Action Network for Transparency in the Supply Chain aims to enroll multinational firms in an effort to entice their suppliers to use the GRI G3 Guidelines to disclose publicly their sustainability track record and challenges.

CROs should help companies 'prune, plant and preserve' 

Some Corporate Responsibility Officers (CROs) have a big problem. In the best of times, many are treated as spin doctors with little authority to make strategic change within their organizations. And now that the economy has headed south, corporate responsibility and sustainability (CR&S) can appear more marginal than ever. After all, who needs to worry about social issues or the environment when the company’s immediate problem is to protect earnings, cut costs and hit the numbers?

Is it time to throw in the towel or hunker down and get serious?

The price of oil just hit $120 per barrel, UBS plans to cut 5,500 jobs, and more than a few former CEOs are finding ample time to hone their golf games as the weakening economy takes its casualties. For corporate responsibility aficionados, is it time to cut back on corporate responsibility programs and prepare to do battle again when the economic fog clears? Au contraire, say the people in the trenches on the sustainability front.