faulker031

The end of July. School is out, the beach is beckoning, and North America is just emerging from a massive heatwave. OK, so its grey and chilly in much of Northern Europe right now, but for many of us, summer is truly here. And like all self-respecting sunworshippers, we're all too aware that this means it is time for sunscreen. The question is, though, what is the responsible choice among the myriad brands in the market? And what counts for responsible when it comes to sunscreen anyway? Over at the Ethical Consumer website , help is at hand. The UK-based magazine publishers and all-round ethical shopping wonks produce ethical buying guides for just about everything. Their buyers guide for sunscreen is available free and includes probably more information than anyone could possible want about how the various brands stack up against a wide array of social and environmental issues. Top of the list of things to avoid are potentially harmful chemical ingredients, including various para...

To write about Rupert Murdoch, the Australian born media mogul and Chairman & CEO of Newscorp, in a business ethics blog seems somewhat tedious. Already in the first edition of our business ethics textbook nearly a decade ago we had a vignette on him and his conspicuous influence on governments and public opinion. There is however now a good reason to take the subject up again. Murdoch and his British subsidiary News International have taken the old story to a new level ( The Guardian maybe has the most comprehensive coverage on this). Murdoch’s British tabloid ‘News of the World’ (NoW) has been in the headlines for a while for hacking into voicemail accounts of a number of celebrities. Actually the story is now lingering on since at least 2007. It only broke last week as to what the real extent of this scandal has grown into over the years: voicemail accounts, cell phones, bank accounts and legal files of some 4,000 individuals, 5,000 landline numbers and 4,000 mobile numbers may...

Data visualization, or the creation of "infographics", has been gradually seeping into the corporate responsibility world. And its no surprise. When their designers get it right, infographics can tell you an important story in a wonderfully accessible way using cool, hard facts. But when they get it wrong, it's just, well..... a mess. Too much data and it is confusing; too little and it risks being banal. And using the wrong data can simply discredit the whole enterprise from the beginning. So what does a good corporate responsibility infographic actually look like then? We've been taking a good look at the craze for infographics, and picked out some of the best and the worst that relate to corporate responsibility issues. There are more and more appearing every day, so we're not claiming to provide anything like an exhaustive review, but here are a few examples that we think give a good flavor of the potential and pitfalls of turning business ethics into pictures...