"Richesse oblige"

Peter Wuffli, CEO of the swiss bank UBS, is joining the tradition of the rich philantrops and entrepreneurs. The swiss newspaper NZZ calls this "Richesse oblige". It means taking responsability for the wealth in your hands and give back something to the world.

According to the NZZ of the December 28 2006, Peter Wuffli has founded with his wife Susanna a new foundation called "Elea Foundation for Ethics in Globalization". The foundation has a starting capital of 20 Mio. CHF reports the NZZ.

The objectives sound ambitious*:
-foster awareness of the interdependence which results from globalization and help develop an ethical approach of it;

- foster awareness about global change processes,
-in Switzerlandd: foster knowledge about economic developments in a time of globalization

-abroad: help victims of globalization to open up new perspectives and fight poverty caused by effects globalization

"Richesse obliges" is well established conviction among the older generation of rich people in Switzerland says the NZZ, but acknolewdges to Wuffli that he is one of the first younger managers to adopt this motto.

Wikipedia quotes Wuffli as: "A company is only as ethical as its people".

It seems that UBS is taking ethics more seriously as of today. To be continued...

(*this is quoted and translated from the NZZ by me, therefore it might not be 100% accurate...however, I did not find a website with an official version yet)

A sustainable entrepreneur

There is an interesting article in the Swiss paper 'Neue Zürcher Zeitung', which highlights the work of the ARVINA foundation, founded by the swiss entrepreneur and philantrop Stephan Schmidheiny.

The foundation is promoting sustainable development throughout Latin America supporting civil society actors. AVINA believes in a bottom-up approach and supports many small initiatives, organisations etc.

AVINA formulates its strategy like this:

We facilitate links among individuals committed to sustainable development by promoting the creation of increasingly constructive and inclusive communities.

Working with our partners, we identify opportunities, build agendas for social transformation, promote responsible citizenship and seek to expand social capital in order to contribute to the construction of more sustainable societies"

AVINA gets its financial resources from the VIVA Trust, again founded by Stephan Schmidheyni.

If you read german, read the piece the NZZ-piece otherwise go to the website of the Foundation.

Communications: A deafening silence?

Yes, there is often silence, when it comes to communicating about environmental and sustainability issues.

Hey come on Communicators you have something some responsibility to this..and you have something to say there.
And say it loud and clearly to your TopManagement:

It is not enough to pay lipservice. It needs 'action' first and the adequate communication to put the action into the right context.

Read the whole article in the FT, "Communications a deafening silence".

Where is the fortune at the bottom

Mallen Baker brings this interesting discussion about Prahalads thesis of the Fortune at the bottom of the Pyramid.

Read the whole article

You find more details about the book on Amazon.

Toys behave badly

Toys R Us is pointed out... in the swiss media. The company got bad ratings for producing some of their puppets in China. And they do not want talk to the press. Definitely, not the right behaviour to foster confidence and trust.

More interestingly, the journalists also points out the various dilemmas: Consumers don't want to buy expensive toys, consumers don't have the information (they don't know how the puppets were produced), furthermore the standards for such ratings are not very clear etc.

But one thing seems clear to me: Hiding from the press is no good anyway. You get the bad role.

You can read the article of the Tages-Anzeiger online, if you handle the german ;-)

WBCSD -

I had to add the link of this important site: The World Business Council for Sustainable Development is an important actor, helping to create awareness among governments and the business community that sustainable development and commerce can go hand in hand... and that the climate issue is as serious one (for those who did not notice)

As it says on their website, at the Nairobi Conference the council will present 'possible options for action to urgently adress the climat and energy challenges':

The WBCSD calls on governments to create the predictable long-term framework conditions required for business to invest in a sustainable energy future.

More details can be read in their report Energy & Climate - A contribution to the dialogue on long term cooperative action ( 2.1 MB)

Online Special on CSR from Germany

You find interesting thematic online-special on CSR at the Competence Site. Many contributions of matter experts and practicioners explore the different sides of CSR giving a european and german perspective to the debate. Of course, all in german ;-)

Coop and WWF

For Switzerland, this is a first one: One of the big retailers engaged in a partnership with Coop and agreed to strengthen its measures to protect the environment: promote environment-friendly products, improve their declaration...

Yeah, the competition is getting tougher also in swiss-retail-business with the soon coming competitors and discounters: Aldi and Lidl.

A success for the WWF and a temptative from Coop to distinguish itself on the market with a 'somewhat' greener image than the others. It will be interesting to see what the other big player (Migros) will do.

And definitely it will be up to us - the consumers - to support such responsible corporate action.

More details...

The poisoned pill: make money or save lives?

In an interesting article Mallen consider the huge CSR challenge that pharmaceutical companies face in Africa against the background of the Aids epidemic. Make money or save lives?

How to combine patient relief and profit-driven business practices in a context of poor countries with weak health infrastructures?

There has already been gone a lot of action and thinking into this. Just consider the two what the MSF campaign Access to Essential Medicines has done and said with respect to that.


Focusing and advocating for exclusively on more research for rare diseases the DNDi website - the Drugs for neglected diseases initiatives - is worht a visit.

It is obvious that there is need for more debate, thinking and committement to progress towards a better way to deal with this huge challenge. I am quite sure that this issue will push CSR even more on the agenda of top-management and develop the thinking and practises of CSR - at least within the pharmaceutical industry. Next opportunity for this, will be in september at the international expert conference in Basel: "Access to Life-Saving Medication". The conference is organized by the Basel Institute on Governance.

No time for CSR

Businesses are owned by their shareholders - any money they spend on so-called social responsibility is effectively theft from those shareholders who can, after all, decide for themselves if they want to give to charity.

On of the arguments against Corporate Social Responsiblilty on Mallenbaker.net

The site proposes to think about the arguments in order to find the best responses. Definitely a good exercise. The central error in the above argument is, that investing in CSR is not simply giving money away to charity. Managing an enterprise is managing relationships with multiple stakeholders, relationships that can strongly influence - on the long-term - the "licence to operate". These relationships can be expressed under the concept of reputation. For instance, consider the case of Coca-Cola, where its "Reputation"- the market-capitalization - exceeds by far the "property value" of the Company. In particular, in case of Coca-Cola, where about 96% of its value is made of intangibles, the argument goes on.

Read other arguments.

NGOs returning to Activist roots?

An interesting post on Edelman blog on whether US NGO's are maturing or returning militant roots. Of course, the background is an survey carried out by the Edelman agency, but still very intersting... as you can read...:

"In Edelman/Harvard/IBLF survey of Fortune 500 companies, global NGOs, global media and institutional investors, all agreed that MNC should view less-developed markets as an opportunity to grow market and increase shareholder value.

There are a few issues for business to consider in this environment:

1) Is a company ready to make a long-term commitment? There is no easy exit strategy once you are committed.

2) Can the company outline a plan to self sufficiency for the social actors? For example, Rajiv Gupta of McKinsey eloquently described a plan to increase the supply of health workers in India, which began with a think tank on public health to affect public policy, creating institutes for public health and making health a respected and desireable profession.

3) Can the company identify its areas of core competence (logistics, marketing, management) and how it can work along side NGOs who do the actual service delivery (note that companies are not credible actors in public interaction and are too vulnerable to political pressures). "

Employees first!

Rethinking CSR - US perspective

The results of a new CSR survey from Fleischman and Hillard are out. In there you find the surprising figure of almost 30% of respondents who assess CSR of an organization based on how well they treat their employees. Only about 3% referred to donations as being the most important sign of CSR. Should american charities start to worry...

Download the Executive Summary of the survey.

Most important influencers on CSR in UK

Discovered this interesting study on the stakeholders influence network on the debate on CSR. The analysis focus on the question of "who are the most important influencers on CSR in the UK?".

Influence is when people listen to what you say or read what you have said.

It's on the basis of such information (citations, references, articles etc...) available in the Public Domain that Onalytica.com has calculated the influence of stakeholders on the CSR-debate. The most important influencers come not surprisingly from the business and the political arena.

The most important three sources quoted in the study are:
1. www.bitc.org.uk
2. www.csr.gov.uk
3. europa.eu.int

You can download the summary

Good question: Is Fair Trade a Quick Corporate Fix?

Can Fair-Trade certification prematuerly undermine the real public pressure for real change? A recent survey referring to Nestlés Fair Coffee Partner Blend showed that two thirds of respondents - of whom about 80% were Nestlés boycotters - thought that the certification meant that the whole company had been audited for Fair Trade Practices!

Of course, this is not the case.

Companies should be careful not to be seen in the eyes of the public as to foster such misconceptions on purpose. If too many people - for whatever reason - belief the wrong things, this could build up another future backlash.

With respect to Fair Trade, companies should apply transparent and full communication strategies. It would be very doubtful and short-sighted trying to benefit from such misconceptions.

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