Sustainability & Greening

Could BP have avoided the Gulf Oil Spill if it had more Women Executives?

May 26, 2010

Tweet How much has the paucity of women executives at BP and the overall gender imbalance in BP’s managerial ranks contributed to the Gulf Oil Spill? I’m betting that had there been more women in the executive ranks at British Petroleum, more women (especially from inside the Company) on BP’s Board of Directors, and more […]

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Organic Discount or Competency Penalty? The real reason organic wines sell for less

March 9, 2010

Tweet Stereotypes about non-profit and for-profit firms explain why organic wine can’t command higher prices. Today’s Freakonomics column picks up on UCLA research reported earlier this week by Matt McDermot at Treehugger.com. The researchers, Magali Delmas and Laura E. Grant, demonstrated that organic wine cannot command as high a price as conventional (non-organic) wine. This […]

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Wal-Mart Knocks Off the Girl Scouts

August 3, 2009

Tweet (Welcome MacLeans Readers… Please join the conversation! ) Just when you think your opinion about Wal-mart might be changing… Just when you think that maybe, just maybe, Wal-mart was learning to be a better citizen… Wal-mart turns around and does something really … despicable. It’s not discriminating against women, strong-arming suppliers, polluting neighborhoods or […]

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Where is my Values-Driven Landscaper?

April 19, 2009

Tweet I don’t get it. My “Tree Guy”, the fellow who sprays professionally applies pesticides to my hemlock hedge to prevent wooly adelgids from sucking the life out of them, came by to make sure we were renewing our contract with him. Some of his customers are switching to less expensive, less professional solutions, and […]

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A Benevolent Perfect Storm for Progressive Organizational Movements

April 16, 2009

Tweet “A Benevolent Perfect Storm.” Isn’t that a lovely image? It comes from David Ellwood, dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as quoted by Steve Lohr in his NYTimes article “With Finance Disgraced, Which Career Will Be King?” Ellwood hopes that one outcome of the collapse of social and monetary incentives to take a […]

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Authentic Organizations Turn Green from The Inside Out

February 4, 2009

Tweet How does an Authentic Organization create green products? In her advice to organizations that want to reposition their corporate brands as “eco-friendly”, Susan Gunelius of Corporate Eye argues that organizations need to start being green before they claim to be green. As Gunelius explains: Your customers aren’t going to believe messages claiming your (corporate) […]

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“What if you could buy social justice?” or Does ‘values shopping’ really make a difference?

December 15, 2008

Tweet Can for-profit, for-purpose organizations make a difference, if we patronize them? Thinking about an organization’s authenticity invites us to examine simultaneously what the organization does and how it does it. When we think about organizations being authentic, we assume that organizations have their business purpose — the thing that they’re out there to "do", […]

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“Loving” my Authentic CSA? Good to know I’m not crazy….or alone!

June 9, 2008

Tweet Every now and then, when I think about what thinking about Authenticity does to me, I start to wonder if I’m crazy. Does anyone else get excited by “Girlcotts”, corporate shills, rice pudding, or bad branding plays? Well, here’s some perspective on my recent post, re: ‘Loving my CSA‘: Data point: When I googled […]

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