I have spent most of the day at the GeSI/EICC tantalum and tin workshop.An impressive array of participants for what I thought was a narrow topic. Moreover, we are focussed on the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am moved to write about it becuase the issue illustrates a CR dilemma so effectively.  The core of the problem is that some tantalum and tin (two metals used in electronic devices including cellphones) comes from mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that are controlled by, and therefore fund, militia groups that are perpetuating armed conflict. We didn’t even get into any discussion about whether any of these groups have valid greivances. Lets assume for the purposes of this post they do not.

The easiest response is to stop sourcing these metals from the DRC. It provides 20% of tantalum and 6% of global tin supplies. So there are plenty of other sources. But these metals provide $28M of income to the DRC, most of it staying with the family owned mines and intermeidaries. A ban would deprive millions of already impoverished people and their depedents of their livelihoods.

So companies,governments and NGO are looking for processes to ensure that all metals sourced from the country are conflict free. The supply chain is a long one with many companies, like my own, as many as 10 degrees of separation from the mines. this addes a lot of complexity. Many options were discussed and explained including UN guidlines, SEC laws, tracing processes and sample fingerpinting. Getting it to all hang together is the challenge. And ensuring that we don’t put in place a process that eases our consience  but doesn’t actually solve the problem.  The trick is for the inctentives on the ground to be aligned with those outside the country, otherwise any system could be gamed.

Given the magnitude of the primary issue – to keep the economy of the mining communties afloat without supporting conflict – we barely touched on issues like child labor, safe working conditions and environmental impact.

Most consumers have probably never heard of tantalum. So why put in the effort ? Well it is the right thing to do, a long term return and a risk mitagation  strategy. Hopefully, if the problem is addressed correctly,  the issue will be reolved and most consumers will never need hear of tantalum.

I left the workshop with a new appreciation for the web of interconnecting issues we face in sustainability.

12/15/10 post script – interesting commentary from Ethical Corporation http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=7209&rss=70.xml

I absolutely believe that a core sweet spot for CR is doing good AND making money. Where there is an intersection between a market for a product and meeting a social or environmental need, a corporation can do much good. This is at the core of integrating corporate responsibility into the business. But is there a line or a limit beyond which we should not go? Beyond which it becomes manipulation?

Here is a simple example.  I have a solar powered world globe at home – it rotates from clean energy, the power of the sun – and is marketed as such. I love it. Included in my passion for old books is a weakness for maps and globes. Plus, I am fascinated by the technology that makes it rotate by the solar component. But it is not really “green”. Reading the description of the product, and the complexity that goes into making it work, it becomes evident very quickly that the energy and materials that went into its construction far outweigh the benefit of it being solar powered (put aside whether one even needs a continually rotating globe!)

This is a simple example but I think illustrates an important point. For a product or service to legitimately be at the intersection of corporate responsibility and business value it must have a net positive contribution to the problem it is purporting to address.

My solar globe is a pretty clear example. The green implications are a ploy and if I had bought it for its quality of greenness I think I would have been manipulated!

In the example of digital photo frames, the implications are less clear. Digital frames claim to reduce photo paper usage and I am sure they do to some extent. But I suspect they still fall on the wrong side of the line. They claim to replace the printing of lots of photos but does it offset the footprint of the device’s manufacture and operation? Perhaps this example is more marketing than manipulation.

Maybe I should just trade-in my globe in for a composter which is squarely in the corporate responsibility pot.

The last flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery is due to take off today, with one, or at most two, more flights planned of other vehicles.

We are accustomed to think in terms of looking forward with wonder at what the future will hold. But the case of the space shuttle, the supersonic passenger aircraft Concorde and lunar landings, will have my children and grandchildren looking back in wonder.  Realizing that I lived in a time when business people regularly crossed the Atlantic faster than the speed of sound and when astronauts landed on the moon and traveled into space and back in a reusable vehicle.  The drivers for these achievements are a mix of national pride, competitiveness and co-operation.

It is a human instinct to want to build on and supersede the achievements of previous generations. But one of the challenges to sustainability is that we tend to do that in the most visible and measurable ways – further, faster, bigger, more often, more ambitious. Often this striving to supersede, requires more resources. Sometimes, as within the case of Concord, the dream simply wasn’t sustainable.

Just like the next person, distant exploration and speed excite me. My heart will certainly speed up and I will feel a pride in American ingenuity when I see Space Shuttle Discovery take off.  Nevertheless, while I will be sad to see the end of the program, I hope that it could mark a turning point in the way we judge progress.

Instead of further, bigger, stronger and faster, I hope we can come together to celebrate success from achieving objectives that are just as technologically demanding, but measured by their contribution to sustainability rather than by speed, distance and size of the smoke plume!

post script 16 November 2010 – ironically, the space shuttle Discovery has not yet lifted off due to a series of technical issues that are still being addressed

As part of our series on ethics, originally published on the CROA blog, here is the second of five ethical dilemmas to test your ethical muscles and the CROA’s draft Ethics Code.  After you read the scenario and deliberate on the choices, check out the Ethics Code and then let us know how it helped guide your decision.  Share how you’d answer this dilemma and how the Ethics Code helped (or didn’t).

John is the CSO at Smith & Co, a toaster-oven manufacturer. Smith & Co retained Evans Strategic On-Line Marketing and pays it to improve Smith & Co’s share in the toaster-oven market.  Smith & Co pays Evans a fee, the size of which is related to how much online market-share they win for Smith.  Evans promises an increased market-share through search engine and consumer communications techniques.  The board, on which John sits, signs off on the deal and John votes in support.

It turns out Evans recruits a couple of contractors who populate sites like Amazon with fake positive reviews for the Smith & Co product.  The press got wind of this and the story breaks.

You are the CRO at Jones Bros, a competitor of Smith & Co. Your company thought of retaining Evans Strategic On-Line Marketing a year ago, but you, the CRO, got involved in the procurement process and discovered their underhanded methods and influenced your company not to use Evans for ethical and reputation reasons.   You bring a complaint to the CROA ethics board against John.

After receiving the complaint, John sends you an email saying he had no knowledge of Evan’s methods and relied on the Chief Marketing Officer’s endorsement in voting for them.  He asks that you intervene with the ethics committee.

How does the code guide you and the ethics board in making a decision?

Share your comments below or join us at CRO Summit for a live-fire exercise.  Click here to read Ethical Dilemma #1.

I am speaking today at the CSR and the Sustainability Scorecard 2010 conference in San Francisco. My views on the topic of scorecards and measurement are contrarian to the mainstream although hopefully not too much.  Most of these views have been shared on my blog addressing  various issues of measurement and corporate responsibility here, here, here and here.

In our field of CR, we use scorecards for rankings, ROI, KPIs, targeting employees, measuring project impact, labeling products and assessing vendors. But is it effective?  I believe that measuring and scoring raises a dilemma for CR professionals—one that can be summarized in three phases:

• “You cannot manage what you cannot measure”
• “Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts”
• “Lies, damn lies and statistics”

As I pulled together my thoughts for the presentation they coalesced in the following way.

1. Measurement is critical to managing business. Numbers are the language of business, but they can also blind us to broader issues which may impact the way we approach and interpret measures. It is part of the role of CR practitioners to help the business world keep a broader and longer term perspective than is reflected by numbers alone.
2. To break out of the mindset that CR is only philanthropy and ‘giving back to the community’ and instead have it become part of mainstream business, CR practitioners need to speak the same language as the rest of the business world and prove the value of their initiatives in quantifiable terms, integrated with the overall plans of the business (it is not lost on me that this is in tension with idea #1!)
3. Sustainability, as a component of CR, lends itself to measurement; resource utilization can be measured and controlled within the framework of not consuming more now than is commensurate with the needs of future generations. These are quantifiable issues.
4. But, if not used thoughtfully and represented accurately, measures can intentionally or unintentionally mislead and in so doing misdirect action. Corporate responsibility practitioners should take very seriously the responsibility of using data and statistics accurately.
5. The broader issues of corporate responsibility, especially those concerned with ethical dilemmas, do not lend themselves to resolution by quantification. We should not allow the tempting attraction of challenges that can be measured in neat packages distract us from giving the necessary attention to those which cannot easily be measured.
6. A strong focus on materiality is the key to avoiding the pitfalls.

I am interested in your views on measurement.  Please share your thoughts with me below.

I had some interesting meetings last week seeing two of the incredible and varied benefits of ICT services.  But in both cases I noticed the common theme that technology can sometimes enable us to do things that don’t necessarily make sense to do.

The first was with Alice Ray, founder of a small software company called Ripple Effects. Ripple Effects produces a powerful platform for helping troubled youth learn skills and coping mechanisms to deal with situations with which they struggle.  A light bulb went off when I realized that communicating via the computer doesn’t have to be an inferior form of an in person interaction.  In some situations a computer can appear much less threatening and therefore a better tool than sitting in front of a person.

But Alice is also struggling with a data protection issue.  Her platform can identify and record what a participant is exploring.  So for example, if a young person explores the information for ‘child abuse’ it indicates a potentially discoverable piece of information. Counselors want to know it because it might help them aid the young person.  Schools want to know it for a similar reason.   But does a youth want this information revealed?  If it becomes known that their actions are being watched youth will not want to use the platform. I am by no means knowledgeable enough on this topic to state an opinion, but it certainly illustrates the gap between what you can do with technology and what you should do with it.

I came across another example later the very same day (I love my job!) when I attended Gridweek in DC.  I visited with some of the vendors and customers with whom we are working on smart grid and smart metering on both sides of the Atlantic. It is incredible how the capabilities of ICT technology and needs of energy grids are intersecting. I also saw some very impressive consumer dashboards and associated systems for managing energy usage in the home. They were impressive, but I am not convinced that they were valuable.  I was nowhere near convinced that a consumer (myself included) would take the time to determine at what price of electricity they want the thermostat to change the room temperature or fridge temperature, and by how many degrees. The technology can enable us to do it, but that doesn’t mean we are going to. What we need is something that will make the consumers life easier to manage in a low carbon economy, not something that makes life more complex.

So what’s the bottom line that I learned from these different interactions? It clearly pointed out to me that just because you can does not mean you should.

I was recently asked to write a guest post for CEIL. If you are unfamiliar with the organization, CEIL is an independent organization designed to educate and share information with government and military professionals charged with identifying buying green goods and services.  It might seem a bit odd, my writing for a government organization blog as a representative of a UK based telecom company, but I see a lot of overlap within government and corporate. Below is my guest post for the readers of CSR Perspective.

The central question asked of CR practitioners is “how far should a corporation go to ‘do good’ in society?” Or put another way, what, in addition to delivering a profit and following the law, should a responsible company do? The answer to this question has three parts, which I call the three overlaps between the private sector and governments.

It doesn’t take much reflection to identify the many and significant responsibility overlaps between the private sector and government. The principles of good corporate responsibility are totally aligned with good management and sustainable organizations; transparency, materiality and ethics for example. When we focus on corporate sustainability as it pertains to environmental sustainability, we quickly find that cost savings and corporate responsibility can go hand-in-hand. With that said, let’s look at the three overlaps I previously mentioned.

1 – What is a Green Product?

One question that I frequently come across from both the public and private sectors is how to assess whether a potential vendor is green. The energy efficiency of a company’s operations (the company’s ‘direct’ impact) is important, but that is only the beginning of what we need to look at. A green company also pays great attention to the footprint that its products and services impose on its customers by their design and consumption. I think of this as the ‘indirect’ dimension of sustainability.

2 – Responding to Needs

Just as government responds to the people, a green company also considers how the need for society to go green changes the marketplace. For example, in the information communication technology (ICT) sector, there are many opportunities to use IT and telecommunications to reduce the broader footprint of society. This is the “enabled” dimension of sustainability – using teleconferencing in place of travel is one of the best-known examples. In the ICT sector the potential for reducing energy usage and carbon emissions through ‘enabled’ savings is at least five times greater than the direct and indirect impact of the sector as a whole (detailed in SMART 2020 report).

3 – Guiding the Public Discussion

Lastly, what does a company’s communications – PR, advertising and lobbying say about it? Companies are experts at branding and can have a significant impact through their communications. I think of this as the ‘inform and influence’ dimension of sustainability, and it is something the public and private sectors must both do to create meaningful environmental change.

Whether you are in the public or private sector, I encourage you to use these dimensions when assessing whether potential vendors are truly green. They will help you determine the extent to which they align with your organization’s sustainability goals.

Originally posted on the CROA blog.

By Richard Crespin

As Kevin Moss mentioned in his earlier post, the CROA’s Professional Development Committee drafted an ethics code and came up with a set of ethical dilemmas to test it.  In this post we layout the overall concept of ethical dilemmas and propose the first dilemma for you — our field testers — to consider.

Ethical Dilemmas:  Four Classics

In his book, How Good People Make Tough Choices, Rushworth Kidder defined an ethical dilemma as a right vs. right choice.  Morals or laws govern right vs. wrong.  We use ethics to choose between right vs. right.  Kidder identified four classic ethical dilemmas:

• Truth vs. loyalty.  Honesty or integrity vs. commitment, responsibility, or promise-keeping.
• Justice vs. mercy.  Fairness, equity, and even-handed application of a principle or rule conflict with compassion or empathy.
• One vs. many.  When the needs of an individual person or group conflicts with the needs of a larger group or society as a whole.
• Short-term vs. long-term.  Now vs. then conflicts arise when immediate needs or desires run counter to future goals or needs.

The names of these individual dilemmas are less important than the fundamental concepts that underlie them.  In the fictional cases we outline below and in subsequent posts we tried to capture one or more of each of these dilemmas and then see how the ethics code might help or be improved based on feedback from individual practitioners playing out the scenario.

Scenario #1:  A Gaggle of Privacy Concerns – A Truth vs. Loyalty Dilemma.

You are the CRO at a large internet search-engine provider.  This morning your company received a request from the Chinese government to provide personal data on some users.  If you provide the data you will break the ethical standards of your parent company, by breaking privacy commitments, and the ‘offenders’ may be arrested.  But if you do not, you will break the law in China and also put some of your employees at risk of imprisonment.    Your CEO has called you to an emergency meeting to figure out how to respond the the Chinese government.  The CROA code is on your desk.  What light — if any — does it shed?

I posted this on the blog of the Corporate Responsibility Officers Association on October 4, 2010

Doctors have an ethics code. PR professionals, accountants, lawyers, ombudsman, engineers and ethics officers all have ethics codes.  In many ways, a well crafted ethics code defines a profession; it gives guidance to its practitioners to support the most taxing judgment calls they will have to make and articulates its defining values to those outside the profession.

Deciding between what is right and wrong can sometimes be difficult. Corporate Responsibility practitioners often have to go further and decide between two rights.  We also have occasion to stand between a legally permissible and commercially compelling course of action, but one that is morally wrong and will ultimately impact our business negatively.

Without an ethics code we are alone in tackling both of these defining challenges of our field.   Without an ethics code, we are in a job, not a practice and certainly not a profession.  Surrounded by peers from other business functions that have professional membership organizations and ethics codes, we will not be able to carry out our role without these things.

With this in mind, the professional development committee of the Corporate Responsibility Officers Association (CROA), together with an advisory support group has developed a draft ethics code to whet your appetite and stimulate discussion across the practice on what we are really all about. It doesn’t focus on philanthropy or sustainability or any other tool of corporate responsibility. Rather it attempts to define values and standards that the practitioner brings to their company and to their peers.

Do you think we need an ethics code?  Would you sign up to one?

In order for the approach to be successful we need to achieve two things.  The practitioner must be eager to sign up and stand by the code and more importantly, companies must be proud, perhaps even require, that their CRO abides by the code, in order to demonstrate their commitment to CR to their stakeholders.

Take a look at the draft online and add your comments. The discussion around the code here (and at CRO Summit in Chicago on Nov 4th) is as important a part of the process as the final code.

Over the next few weeks I will be describing some ethical dilemmas here in the CROA blog and seeking your input on them, and in particular on whether the code helps distinguish between right and wrong and in some cases, between right and more right.

I am speaking at the 4^th Sustainable Supply Chain Summit in San Francisco at the end of October so I have started trying to synthesize some of my thoughts on supply chain issues in preparation for preparing my presentation.

When I first joined the CR field a few years back, I had a very enlightening conversation with the VP of Sustainability at a major retail brand. The company is recognized as a sustainability leader.

I was probing to what extent this company, as a customer of BT’s, took BT’s corporate sustainability credentials into account in vendor decisions.

In conversation we identified three classes of vendor:

Sustainability of topmost importance – Vendors that provide products that will be visible and probably sold, with vendor branding, to the customer’s customer in the store.

Sustainability of secondary importance – vendors that provide products that will visible in the store but not vendor branded (furniture, fixtures, ingredients, etc.)

Sustainability of a low priority – vendors whose products or services support the company but are neither branded nor visible in the store. In the case of this customer, that included the ICT products that BT sold.

I see the logic of this approach. I think it is driven by the activist organizations that have focused their brand awareness on what the consumer customer takes home with them.  Consumers would be horrified if the jeans they are wearing were made by enforced child labor, or the paper in their home printer comes from an old growth forest. But they are probably far less concerned about who made the blinds in the store windows or the shelving on which the product is displayed.

But I have increasingly come to think that this makes the same mistake that many companies made when they ignored their supply chain completely because it was out of sight and not within their perceived legal responsibility.

Materiality is very important. Being responsive to stakeholders is important too, but we should not allow either to become blinkers.

One of the core skills of a corporate responsibility practitioner should be to look outside of the box and beyond the horizon so we can address the next issue before it becomes a problem.  Paying no attention to the sustainability credentials of the vendors your customers cannot see will lead to a fall sooner or later.