The missed opportunity of iTunes for CR communications

People learn in different ways. One of my favourite ways is by listening.

It seems to add that human element to learning which makes things stick more easily in the memory, for me anyway.

Other people seem to agree, given the popularity of podcasts on Ethicalcorp.com, the only site for which I have stats to hand as I write this.

iTunes is the most popular place to sign up to them all in one place, as far I as know.

But if you search for "corporate responsibility" on iTunes only two corporate podcasts come up. (The same goes for CSR, spelt out in full)

One is from HP, which doesn't download any episodes if you sign up.

The second is from Sainsbury's, and is an investor relations podcast from a few months ago. It has nothing to do with corporate responsibility.

I wonder if this is a missed opportunity for corporate responsibility communications by large companies.

They could have their heads of CR interviewed on their progress by a credible external stakeholder and posted on iTunes with CR/CSR/Sustainability tags.

Quick, easy and accessible. I wonder why so few companies are doing this?

I'd guess it's a combination of lack of resources in CR departments and scarcity of ideas about using new media channels in those departments.

A missed opportunity to date.

What are your favourite books on CR/Sustainability?

Harvard does some decent publishing on business strategy as most of us would agree.

Here's a link to some new titles, a couple of which I thought were interesting.

I liked Andrew Winston's previous book, Green to Gold. I imagine his new tome is worth a scan too.

I don't know about you but I struggle to keep up with all the books out there.

There seems to be a new one every day right now. I hope the publishers are making money from them.

To help all of us decide which books to read, I'd like to ask blog readers to post a few of their favourites below in the comment box, and I'll compile a master list for the blog.

So go on, even if it's just one book, post the name of it. I'll do the rest, and add my own on the final list.

More on the madness of lobby groups

Anyone who read my previous posting on the US oil lobby and the environment, ought to take a look at this LA Times story.

It almost beggars belief.

Here's the story, in a nutshell, from the LA Times article:

"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

Chamber officials say it would be "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" -- complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.

"It would be evolution versus creationism," said William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. "It would be the science of climate change on trial."

Water a bigger concern than climate change, in the eyes of some

A new survey says that nine out of ten people surveyed for a new piece of research rank water as a more pressing concern than climate change.

It's not really surprising, given how grave the situation is.

But don't just take my word for it.

Take a look at the survey results here.

Here's a good webcast on the topic, and what business can/might do.

It features the authentic and personable Peter Swinburn of Molson Coors. I met Peter last week and interviewed him for our magazine.

Swinburn is one of the most genuine CEOs I have ever met.

If you are interested in water and business, keep an eye on Molson.

The podcast of the interview, which I have linked to before, is here.

And here's an interesting website on the topic in general, too.

CEO podcasts on corporate responsibility

For any of you into podcasts, here's a link to our main podcasts page on EthicalCorp.com

And a few recent corporate bigwigs we interviewed:

IKEA CEO Andrew Dahlvig

Economist Executive Editor Daniel Franklin

Molson Coors CEO Peter Swinburn

Enjoy! Love to hear your comments, as always!

Toby

Well done Tesco. Good news on waste

Thanks to Mark Eadie, head of environment at JP Morgan, who alerted me to this story.

In a little-publicised move, a few weeks ago Tesco announced that, ahead of schedule, the company now sends no waste to landfill in the UK.

According to Reuters, Tesco "says 100 percent of its waste from stores, offices and distribution centers across the country are now diverted from landfill -- the result of aggressive recycling and treatment programs that include turning as much as 5,000 tonnes of old meat into heat and electricity each year".

This is significant because they've done it a year ahead of schedule (hence the 'well done' in the title), but also because of the precedent it has set for big companies.

Firms like M&S have similar aims, despite their being no law that requires it, yet.

And the word "yet" may be the key. According to Mark Eadie over at JP Morgan, the UK is fast running out of landfill space, and may soon have to start shipping it abroad.

The result, of course, may be similar to so called electronics recycling, whereby some does get recycled properly, but some just gets dumped in Africa and Asia, often burned and releasing toxic fumes.

So anything that helps stop this happening must be seriously welcome.

Once again, well done Tesco.

The carbon footprint of your Google searches

"Recent research has also highlighted that performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea (a search meaning a series of web searches leading to a conclusion)."

So says Mark Line of Two Tomorrows, a consultancy, in this article.

Worthy of thought, isn't it?

UPDATE: Thanks to a reader (below) for posting a link to Google's response to this above idea.

Google says that:

"Recently, though, others have used much higher estimates, claiming that a typical search uses "half the energy as boiling a kettle of water" and produces 7 grams of CO2. We thought it would be helpful to explain why this number is *many* times too high. Google is fast — a typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds. Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ. For comparison, the average adult needs about 8000 kJ a day of energy from food, so a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds."

So this sounds less than the above claim. I wonder which is right. One of the reasons that I posted the original link is because I was so surprised at how much energy google searches are supposed to use according to the research mentioned.

Greenpeace vs. the BBC

Greenpeace are upset with the BBC's HardTalk programme.

They believe they have been accused of cooking the science numbers on climate change, when they didn't.

This would not be the first time they have been accused of fiddling the numbers to fit their agenda.

Over Chernobyl, for example, in the excellent book, Flat Earth News. And over Brent Spar, the infamous Shell oil storage platform of the mid 1990's.

Take a look at the latest example for yourself, here.

I'd largely be inclined to give Greenpeace the benefit of the doubt. The Brent Spar case was a long time ago and I've never seen the direct evidence myself, it's just an example people always talk about (and I mean always).

The Chernobyl issue is explained well here.

And on the latest spat with the BBC, judge for yourself. Greenpeace does admit that "it's fair to say we could have been more precise" about sea ice over land ice in the arctic, but raises some useful questions about the quality of journalism at the BBC these days.

Here's a link to a podcast interview I did with Greenpeace's head last year.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Banco Real

You knew it was coming.

Another book on values/responsibility from one of the old school 'guru' management theorists.

Porter now gets it, so does Senge. And now Kanter has a new book out.

"SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good" is to be published soon.

It looks like a good read from the extract linked above. Kanter has always been one of the progressive theorists.

And to take some aspects of the work of Jim Collins on the importance of values and explore it as strategic guidance for business ought to gain anyone's interest.

She's looking at firms like IBM, Banco Real and Cemex, the Mexican cement company.

I like this quote from the extract. Simple, but something a lot of companies should take on board:

"Not everything is good, true, and beautiful, of course. There are potential pitfalls. One is foolish choices, in which, for example, social commitments do not have an economic logic that sustains the enterprise by attracting resources. Another pitfall is the creation of heightened expectations that are difficult to fulfill, leading to disappointment when performance falls short of the ideal or cynicism about whether company leaders really believe the lofty words in their statements of values".

Wise words. Better to do something small, well, then do more, than promise big change and fail to deliver.

Caught bribing? Now you might pay personally...

Law.com carries a post from August 20 which may be significant:

"SEC Trots Out a New Weapon: Control Person Liability".

Whilst this sounds like impenetrable legalese, it could matter, quite a lot.

Natural Sunshine Products, a US company, was accused of bribing Brazilian officals to get its products into the country, where law classed some of them as medicines.

The alleged bribe was quite large. Over $1 million in cash.

As usual in these settlement cases, the company admitted nothing but paid the SEC a fine that's actually less than the bribes paid. Which seems odd to me. But then I am not a lawyer.

Here's the potentially significant part:

"Under the proposed settlement, none of the defendants admitted liability but the company agreed to pay a civil penalty of $600,000 and each officer to pay $25,000.

The case was the first FCPA action in which the SEC has charged individuals under the Exchange Act's control liability theory".

Putting this theory into action, apparently, "broadens the scope of potential liability of corporate officers to FCPA claims".

It means your corporate executives, if cutting a deal with the SEC in the US on bribery accusations, may have to pay up out of their own money, in some cases.

There's a good argument to get a bigger budget for your ethics training programmes.

Is water risk your biggest issue?

For some companies, it won't be. But for many, particularly in heavy industry, water is fast moving up the agenda as a major business risk.

A good indication that this is true is contained in this article, entitled "Norway’s state pension fund wise to water risk", published on FT.com today.

The fund owns about 1% of European equities. So it's a big player. And might come knocking on the door of your investor relations team at some point soon to ask about water policy and planning.

We held a conference on the topic of water management last year, and it was clear that big companies are very worried about water. But because it's so complex, defining a clear public position on areas companies cannot affect on their own is tough.

We all remember Bechtel in Bolivia, now a case study of how not to engage communities on water issues!

And the big Western water companies soon found out, a few years ago, that making money from developing nation water systems is tough to do.

There's a report on how big companies are considering water risk today, here.

Titled: "Water ethics, footprinting and supply security. Learn how water factors into your success, and what you should do", there's a free summary, here.

A new kind of football ranking, the stewardship league

Think tank Tomorrow's Company, often a source of interesting fodder on responsible business, has produced a ranking of Premiership football clubs by order of stewardship.

A good way to consider comparing clubs long term. Especially when you consider just how vulnerable football clubs are to the sometimes fast changing wishes of their owners, who often get themselves in over their heads financially, and with the fans.

The overview and ranking is here. And a short BBC article is here.

It will be fascinating to see how, and by how much, this changes next year.

Tomorrow's Company tell me they'll be doing the same again in 2010.

As an Arsenal fan, I wonder if we'll be in second place, (despite current corporate shareholding lockdowns), given the behind the scenes activity involving one controversial shareholder, who apparently supports another club on a personal level and is an Uzbek billionaire (at least on paper).

For football fans with an interest in business, this new book ought to be worth a read.

The authors make the point that football is not so big a business as many people think, if you look at turnovers compared with other sectors.

But the emotional attachment matters far more than just about anything in business to most fans.

Jobs, for many people, come and go. But football clubs generally stick around, even if they are managed as badly as Liverpool by their owners!

By almost pure chance I had lunch last year with one of the key executives that bought the club for one of its current owners.

I'll tell any reader who wants to know about what I heard. Off the record, of course! Catch me at one of our conferences if you want to know the full story.

Almost needless to say, the description of the buying process was hilarious.

More on media ethics, or lack of them

This recent article, about two would be criminals who wanted to sell a memory stick of photos of royal celebrities is interesting.

The pair in questions contacted the Sun newspaper wanting to sell the photos.

They were offered £25,000. But demanded £50,000 and were then reported to the police by the Sun. This lead to their prosecution.

What's interesting is that the judge "said it was to The Sun's credit that they reported the matter to police".

But didn't mention that the Sun only did this when (according to the Telegraph article linked above), the memory stick thieves demanded double what was offered.

So buying 'stolen' pictures for £25,000 would have been fine then, according to the Judge, considering he failed to mention this, which he must have known.

Perhaps there's more to this story than meets the eye. But if not, it's very odd. And is demonstrative of the protected status of the UK newspapers even when they commit illegal and unethical acts.

Which other industry would get away with such things?

Celebrity photos are hardly in the public interest, after all.

Is it ethical to extend payment terms whilst you are making a profit?

The recession has been tough on all of us.

I have friends that have lost jobs, like many of you, no doubt.

My own business, Ethical Corporation, has been hit as much as any in the business services sector.

We had to make one redundancy, and haven't replaced quite a few who have left.

We've curtailed our climate change publishing, (shortly to be re-invigorated as part of Ethical Corporation) and cut down the number of conferences that we hold.

We've all taken a hit, tiny or no pay rises and smaller bonuses, if any.

But even we, as a tiny company in the sea of multi-nationals, still pay our suppliers within 30 days.

Maybe once in a while an invoice goes awry and it's 35 days or so, but our policy is always to pay on time, even when we had to borrow money in one quarter from our investors to pay the bills.

Which is why, capitalist though I am, I find it so hard to stomach the idea of profit-making companies lengthening supplier payment terms to maximise returns.

Aside from the ethics of it, it smacks to me of laziness.

It says: "rather than focusing on opportunity and innovation, let's squeeze the supply base for a few drops more".

Morally speaking, it's just wrong. There's no two ways about it.

Companies do it because of greed at the top, and because executives who have reached that level choose not to think about the impact their decisions can have, particularly on smaller companies.

We've criticised Tesco's practices recently, for paying non-food suppliers on 60 day terms.

But some recent news on supplier payment terms is even more surprising.

Carlsberg, the Danish brewing brand with a prominent link to "CSR" on its website, is now taking up to 120 days to pay suppliers.

The official policy, confirmed, says the Forum of Private Business (FPB), by Carlsberg marketing director David Scott, is 95 days.

But if an invoice is issued "early in the month", according the FPB, a small business lobby group, suppliers could wait 120 days to get paid, double that of Tesco's suppliers.

Carlsberg announced pre-tax profits of £344 million for the second quarter of 2009.

The Forum of Private Business has a late payment "Hall of Shame" on its website.

You'd be surprised at the list of companies.

Others include Argos, InBev and Diageo.

All firms with stated responsible business policies and practices.

The UK Government, known more for squeezing small business itself over larger, more mobile firms, has even developed a Prompt Payment Code.

A lot of the banks have signed up for it.

Now what about the retailers and brewers?

Time for them to step up, if they want to be taken seriously on corporate responsibility.

Do you know what your lobby groups are doing?

This example shows you, if you work for a big company, why it's a good idea to know what lobby groups for your industry or issue, might appear to be doing, in some way on your behalf.

At the very least, you run a serious reputational risk if your lobby group is behind the curve, as the more progressive members of the American Petroleum Institute are discovering.

If you can't get into FT.com (you should subscribe, get used to paying for insight!) then here's the story in brief:

The FT reports that the API has asked its members to "deploy thousands of workers in so-called "Energy Citizen" rallies protesting against proposed climate change legislation."

The idea is to for this to happen in the two weeks before Labor Day on 7 September, continuing on into Autumn this year.

ExxonMobil, says the FT, like the idea. They say proposed energy legislation could put US businesses "at a disadvantage" with global competitors.

But some of their fellow API members are also members of the US Climate Action Partnership, a (for who they are) fairly progressive group of companies supporting action on climate change. Among them are Shell, BP America, ConocoPhillips, General Electric and Siemens.

Someone at one of the oil companies leaked the API memo to Greenpeace.

As a rule, if you work in corporate responsibility, sure it's always good to know what your lobby groups are doing.

Particularly given the role they play in supporting laggard members who often support their 'research'.


UPDATE: 19/08/09: The FT reports today that the first Energy Citizen 'rally' has just been held.

According to the FT, it seems as if employees of Chevron, Anadarko Petroleum and ConocoPhillips, which encouraged staff to participate, went and protested in their lunch break.

Great greenwash we all know and love...a recent round up

Ecohuddle, who I must admit I haven't heard of before, have a good posting on how not to do environmental advertising on their site.

The link is here.

They show images and videos from companies such as GE, GM and others as over-egged examples of the greenwash omlette.

The Malaysian Palm Oil Council's ad is particularly cloying. It won lots of the wrong kind of awards.

I particularly like the cartoon at the start of the Ecohuddle piece I linked to above. Timeless.

Interesting that they didn't include any Shell ads. The firm has now stopped its eco ads, by and large. I wonder if that had anything to do with the decision.

Or it could just be oversight. There's a lot of greenwash out there to choose from!

Readers are welcome to post their own links to useful examples of how not to advertise.

This propaganda piece on mining is one my favourites. There's a debate about it, featuring Greenpeace, here.

Greenwash has become so prevalent in the bamboo fabric sector the US Federal Trade Commission has censured three firms recently, and issued a statement on the topic.

Meanwhile, consultants BSR and Futerra have produced a guide for companies concerned about Greenwash. It's here.

And finally for this round-up, Mother Jones, an excellent American magazine, is having a pop at Fiji Water about greenwash here.

Electric cars: Keep an eye out for this guy

The chap in question is Shai Agassi.

If the media coverage he is getting is anything to go by, he'll go far.

His plans and ideas for the future of electric vehicles at scale, are very compelling.

The question he is trying to answer is:

"How do you run an entire country without gasoline?"

The interview I linked to above tells you about his ideas.

New paper on corporate responsibility and the media

David Grayson's recent Cranfield paper on how and why the global media ought to take corporate responsibility more seriously has now been published online.

Take a look at it, here.

I wrote a foreword to it, based on this essay/peer review I recently penned for the Guardian.

David did a brief Guardian op-ed here.

Their reporting is really strong, I think, and I know they love your comments.

Anywhere on here.

Silly season: the ultimate green car

As you can tell from the headline, (Silly season is when everyone is on holiday and stories even more bizarre than usual, or more unimportant than usual, emerge in the media), you shouldn't spent much time reading this post if you are very busy.

But if not, this short Guardian article is amusing.

How Timpson's have got customer service right

Following on from my earlier posting on corporate responsibility and poor customer service, (Sky are still appalling by the way!), here's a great podcast on how to get it right.

Entitled: "Hell For Leather", it's about Timpson's the shoe repairer/key cutting firm who have developed a philosophy called "Upside down management".

It's an idea based on two key ideas: Allow people to make decisions themselves that are good for the business and good for custmers. And give them incentives to always know the numbers, so they stay focused on the top and bottom line.

Simple and brilliant. Listen to the argument for taking away excessive technology, it may give you pause for thought.

The message there is: "When you deal with people, (customers), taking people (your staff and their decision making power) out of the mix and replacing it with dumb, fixed decision technology, is not a good idea".

Machines may be cheaper, but people buy from people, not brand names.

Unless you are Coke. And you are probably not.

Companies that get sustainability, and some that don't, yet

Here's a list of companies I compiled that I think get it on sustainability, and some that don't.

Post a comment if you think I'm wrong, or right. Or if I missed anyone.

Media ethics: The Sun confesses, kind of

(UPDATE 12/08/09: Thanks to a reader for pointing out that I had not noticed the date on this Sun piece that I refer to, as 2005!, I'll try to be a bit more up-to-date in future!)

You have to read it to believe it.

The Sun, a downmarket British tabloid newspaper owned by News International, ran a seemingly innocuous headline on their website today:

"Julian Brooker apology", it said.

One assumed a correction for a minor factual error was in order.

Click on the headline however, and a different story emerges.

I won't paste it all here, but after a dreadful accident in which a young man was killed, the Sun's journalists seem to have gone insane in "sexing up" the story.

Here's an extract from the apology:

"His parents have asked us to make clear he was not turned into a fireball, was not obsessed with the number 23 and didn’t go drinking on that date every month.
Julian’s mother did not say, during or after the inquest, her son often got on all fours creeping around their house pretending to be Gollum."

The rest is here.

A shocking example of how far media standards have fallen in the UK.

Would our Press Complaints Commission do anything about this? Unlikely.

One for Private Eye's "Street of Shame" section, I would have thought.

If you want to know more about how standards have fallen so low, go here.

How companies stand the test of time

A Harvard professor, Michael Beer, has looked at what he calls "High Commitment, High Performance Management" in a new book.

Case studies and firms looked at include: Southwest, Johnson and Johnson, Hewlett Packard, Nucor Steel, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and Toyota.

Some predictable names there. But I like his elevator pitch for plural management approaches:

"High commitment, high performance (HCHP) companies are firms designed and led by their founders or by transformational CEOs—those who take charge of a company in a crisis—to achieve sustained high commitment from all stakeholders: employees, customers, investors, and community".

The Q&A is fascinating. Particularly the part on barriers to success.

A lot of it I've read before, but we all need reminding, all the time.

Check it out, here.

Greenpeace and Kimberly-Clark, not be sneezed at

As we've reported before, despite claims to the contrary, Kimberly-Clark have not been the leaders they could have been on sustainable forestry.

Now, though, a deal has been done which will see Greenpeace can their "Kleercut" campaign against the company, which fully deserved their attentions for its recalcitrant attitude to wood sourcing.

According to the Washington Post, a company statement and Greenpeace themselves, this is a significant deal for sustainable forestry.

According to the PR: "Kimberly-Clark has set a goal of obtaining 100 percent of the company's wood fiber for tissue products, including the Kleenex brand, from environmentally responsible sources".

The only question is, why did it take this long?

We'll be exploring this in an upcoming edition of our magazine, Ethical Corporation. More from the magazine here.

Liberty Mutual and an interesting debate idea on responsibility

I was marvelling the other day at how the New York Time's homepage manages to be so traditional looking and yet quite readable, when I saw an ad for Liberty Mutual's Responsibility Project.

They are an insurance company. So want people to think about risk and responsibility.

But they have a cool video on there, which they say really took off as a TV advert in the US.

It's a bit cheesy, being about strangers doing small things for each other, but I think it works really well. Take a look.

And more importantly, they are using the site for all sorts of debates about important social issues, beyond just their impact on society.

This is a great idea. With the power of their ad budget, they can bring people together, hire credible bloggers (as they have done), and promote it properly via the front page of NYTimes.com, rather than just linking to it on their homepage.

Of course, it's not perfect, but it's way more authentic than most of the corporate sponsored tosh you see on the internet masquerading as stakeholder engagement.

Oil companies, take note.

If companies want to have a role in encouraging real debate on important issues, this is not a bad way to do it. Well done Liberty Mutual.

Other companies can and should do this. You just need to go get a bigger budget, and think bigger than assuming everyone is interested in your carbon footprint.

We're not, but that doesn't mean you can't get involved in facilitating debate on the topic, you can.

Just make sure it's not all about you, and your issues, all the time.

Going regional to save carbon will surely cost

It could be because of silly season, as August is often called in the global media.

The Financial Times has today published an article, entitled: "Crisis and climate force supply chain shift".

It argues, from limited sources, that transport and carbon costs/concerns are forcing companies to think harder about regional sourcing once again.

So, for Europeans, Ukraine rather than China, or for the U.S., Mexico over say, India.

One major hole in the article is the issue of labour costs.

Carbon costs are set to rise, we know that.

And so will transportation expenses, given the limits of fossil fuels beyond 2020 or so.

These, and political pressure for more supplier development closer to home, will play a role for sure.

But surely labour costs are going to be the biggest factor.

Wages are the biggest expense to any business. These concerns are what has driven globalisation.

Why would that change now, despite climate and fuel concernsm, unless China catches up with Ukraine on pay levels within a decade?

Is their a correlation between claims of CSR and poor customer service?

According to this recent article "BT named worst customer service provider" the companies worst at customer service in the UK are:

1. BT
2. British Gas
3. Sky
4. Virgin Media
5. Carphone Warehouse
6. Vodafone
7. HSBC
8. AOL
9. Barclays
10. O2

All of these firms have very public commitments to corporate responsibility.

BT, Vodafone and British Gas are feted as leaders, often by magazines such as my own.

On sustainability, apart from the Carphone Warehouse and AOL, I'd say all of these companies are doing some interesting work on environmental, social and governance issues.

But, to sound like a Daily Mail columnist for a second, the basics do come first.

Really, they do.

I'd be interested to know if blog readers feel customer service is declining in the recession.

I've certainly noticed HSBC's has been declining. I had to upgrade to the premium ten pound a month service so that I can talk to someone I can understand, and who understands me.

I'm not a customer of the other companies, except 02, who I haven't found strong in the past, until I became a business customer. Since then, they've not been bad.

And as recent Sky customer, I've found them the worst since I once, briefly, tried to do business with Virgin.

Every Sky department tells you to call another one, and none will take responsibility for fixing problems.

Tonight I spent an hour and ten minutes on the phone to two Sky reps, only to be told that the particular issue (missing components) is not their fault and I must call the installation company, who they deny are even a supplier! Astonishing. Almost Python-esque.

Sigh. Still, I suppose one has the CR report to read whilst on hold, should one run out of all reading materials beforehand and have no access to television, conversation or crayons.

Sorry for the bitter end-note. I do really want to like these companies, I really do.

I just wish they would help themselves and take some responsibility for decent customer service.

Let me know what you think. I'd be interested in comments from readers.

If you are awful at customer service, does that negate your corporate responsibility efforts?

P.S. I do feel a bit better after writing this. Blog therapy. But here's someone who really has got their revenge on a company for bad customer services. I guess talent helps!

Big media, sustainability, trust and survival

David Grayson invited me to write the foreword to a forthcoming excellent and timely Cranfield paper on the media and corporate responsibility.

I'll post a link to his paper when it's out in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, here's the short piece I did as the foreword on why big media firms need to grasp corporate responsibility now, if they want to be around in ten years time:

"There is very often a conspiracy of silence within the media on their own ethics.

This debate is particularly relevant, given the Guardian's current public investigation of ethics at the News of the World, and the Daily Telegraph's recent chequebook journalism revelations about the excessive expenses of British Members of Parliament.

Reading the corporate responsibility reports of big media companies around the globe, 'Sustainability' means community, diversity, disability access, environmental impacts.

There's some occasional focus on encouraging media literacy, green programming or editorial coverage, but not much that's meaningful, or revolutionary.

Right now, sustainability reporting in the media largely does not cover transparency, public accountability, allowing critical voices space, confessing to errors publicly, and apologising for mistakes.

Almost all the big media companies produce some sort of material related to their impact on society. But currently the quality, as in other sectors, varies hugely.

Some, like Guardian News and Media, Reuters, Reed Elsevier and Pearson, are making progress. Others, such as the New York Times and Trinity Mirror, are extremely weak.

Why does the media sector lag behind?

So why is the media sector so poor at reporting on non financial performance? Firstly, there's a lack of pressure on them to report. Who holds these 'watchdogs' accountable? The NGOs usually have bigger, more environmentally polluting or egregious, fish to fry.

The big campaign groups hesitate to annoy the big newspapers, television and radio stations. The last thing non-governmental activists want to do is alienate the very conduits for their campaigns that the big corporate targets take notice of.

The accountability deficit extends to politics too. Politicians either don't grasp how the media works, or more importantly have no desire to make more enemies in the press than they already have.

In developed nations, media freedom to do more or less as it wishes is protected by instant cries against censorship and freedom of speech.

In the UK, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) is derided as toothless. Commentators worry aloud that the rich and powerful now seek redress immediately through the courts, rather than via voluntary groups such as the PCC.

This lack of both interest and action on media responsibility is at a time when the decline of quality news and investigative reporting is becoming ever more widespread.

The rise “Churnalism”, quick, cheap, unchecked news, is slowly more obvious as profit-hungry media firms look to cut costs, and corners. A detailed analysis of this trend is contained in the recent book “Flat Earth News”, by the Guardian's Nick Davies.

Media transparency and trust

In February this year the UK charity the Media Standards Trust (MST) published a worrying report, "A More Accountable Press".

The MST's report says that only 7% of the public say they trust national newspapers to behave responsibly. According to YouGov, who carried out the research, 75% of those surveyed thought that "newspapers frequently publish stories they know are inaccurate".

For many media firms, it's obvious that their current corporate responsibility focus on environment, diversity, health and safety and community, as 'sustainability' is too narrow and short sighted. Real sustainability links economic, human and environmental impacts into business. To put it another way: growth and survival strategy.

For the media sector, getting these right in concert can help deliver them that holy grail of responsible business: lasting trust. And it is how much trust we have in the media that will determine which firms survive and prosper, and which fail, in the current business turmoil media businesses find themselves floundering in."

Toby Webb is founder and managing director of Ethical Corporation. Ethical Corporation is an independent business intelligence, publishing and networking company founded in 2001.

A longer version of this article, with analysis of Guardian media group's current progress, is here.