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There's a lot of people out there looking to make sustainability happen in their companies. These are the corporate sustainability 'change agents'. But what drives someone to be a change agent, and if you are one, what type are you? Well, now you can find out. A new working paper, written by Andy with Wayne Visser, explores the motivations of sustainability managers that drive them to devote their time and energies to addressing social, environmental and ethical issues. It presents in-depth research among sustainability managers – and uncovers the pivotal role of values, inspiration, expertise, empowerment, strategic thinking and social contribution as sources of meaning for these purpose-inspired managers. Check it out here at SSRN , where you can download it for free and work out for yourself which of the four types of change agent you are - expert, facilitator, catalyst, or activist. Let us know what you think...after all, it is still a work in progress (but remember it...

Seeing executives of car companies testifying before congress is not too much of a novel picture. It has happened before. But the context of today’s and yesterday’s appearance of Toyota’s top brass in Washington provides a lot of food for thought. We have followed the news for a while and it took things to unfold to convince us that this is actually a very interesting issue not just for business, but yes, for business ethics. It is indeed – and even more so, as one of the seminal cases for the business ethics literature has been a rather similar problem. Remember the Ford Pinto, in the 1970s, where Ford had installed a gas tank which exploded at the slightest collisions and allegedly killed more than 500 people? That case though was clear cut in some ways: Ford decided not to deal with this problem for six years because the cost difference between fixing the car versus compensating the victims amounted to $7.04 per car – too much to ask for a company whose only goal at the time was max...

In the last decade, the business case for CSR (i.e. that attention to social issues needs to make sound business sense) has become something of a mantra for corporate responsibility advocates. Deviation from this script is rare. So it was refreshing to hear Ratan N. Tata, the leader of India's largest conglomerate, Tata Sons Ltd, mark his first public engagement in Canada by speaking eloquently last night of his commitment to a different approach to responsible business. Speaking as the guest of honour at the inaugural event of the Thomas J. Bata Lecture Series in Responsible Capitalism , hosted by our own Schulich School of Business here in downtown Toronto, Tata make it clear that in his view, the developing world presented a different type of challenge for corporate responsibility. "Building schools and hospitals," he argued, "is something you have to do" in countries like India that lack basic government provisions. For corporations, he suggested, this mean...

In January, our sometime collaborator and co-editor of the A-Z of CSR, Wayne Visser set off on a 12 month, 22 country ‘CSR quest’ to talk and learn about how companies can help tackle the world’s most pressing social and environmental problems. Crane & Matten talked to him about what he hopes to achieve and what’s in his luggage. C&M: So, what is the CSR quest and why are you doing it? WV: In my mind it’s a bit like the Holy Grail. Is CSR (corporate social responsibility) something that we should be chasing after, and what actually is a company’s social responsibility? My experience so far is that it means completely different things in different countries. So I want to explore this variety and then capture and share some of the innovative CSR practices that are going on out there. But why pack up all your stuff and go on the road for a year? Co uldn’t you have just sent some emails? You can only do so much with email and internet forums. Unless you meet and engag...

When we reported yesterday on Google's recent spat with China we pointed to the growing political influence and power that the company was wielding. Anyone that takes on the Chinese Government must be pretty sure their political muscle. One of our readers helpfully pointed us to a story by Chris O'Brien that ran in the Mercury News over the weekend, which throws more light on this trend, indicating how Google's spend on lobbying in Washington DC had mushroomed in recent years. O'Brien writes: "In just five years, the search engine giant has gone from almost no presence in Washington to spending more money on lobbying than all but one other Silicon Valley company in 2009. And in the past three months, Google topped all other valley spenders." The charts produced by the Mercury News show just how steep this curve has been, and how its lobbying expenditures are even starting to catch up with its fellow technology giants Microsoft and IBM: The fa...

One of the big business ethics stories of the last month has been Google's announcement in mid January of a 'new approach to China' following reported attacks on the company's IT infrastructure from inside the country. Google's announcement spoke of targeted attacks on the email accounts of known human rights activists, both within and outside China, as well as other security breaches of Google and 'at least 20 other large companies'. Whilst the announcement of this degree of hacking would have been cause for concern, the explicit link to the surveillance of advocates of human rights in China was positively incendiary. Google was not just talking about regular industrial espionage here but about state-sponsored spying for political purposes. So suddenly the company had launched itself into a diplomatic row - albeit one between a company and a government - rather than its usual commercial scrapes. The announcement didn't just make the headlines because ...