The Boston College Center’s annual magazine, The Corporate Citizen, is hot off the presses with more stories about corporate citizenship issues, practitioners and the challenges they face each day.

This issue of the magazine takes a good look at the questions corporate citizenship professionals should be asking about what they are doing and what it takes to excel. It also examines what companies, experts and researchers are finding for answers. The cover story, “Getting to the roots of success”, presents the Center’s leadership competency models that identify the core competencies necessary for corporate citizenship leaders to succeed. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2010 Cone Shared Responsibility Study, released today, reveals companies are failing to make the grade when it comes to effectively engaging consumers in their cause-related and corporate responsibility efforts. Key findings include:

• Eighty-four percent of Americans believe their ideas can help companies create products and services that are a win for consumers, business and society; yet, only half (53%) feel companies are effectively encouraging them to speak up on corporate social and environmental practices and products.
• Three-quarters (75%) of Americans give companies a “C” or below on how they’re engaging consumers around key issues such as business practices and support of social/environmental issues.
• Sixty percent of consumers say they would be more likely to buy a company’s products and services if it incorporated their feedback and ideas.

View a PDF of the complete data fact sheet here.

Everyone is talking these days about Walmart’s Sustainability Index and how it is driving sustainability to a level that government in the U.S. has not been able to achieve. Now Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest non-profit health care provider with 8.7 million subscribers and over $40 billion revenue, is expected to do the same for the health care industry with the launch of its Sustainability Scorecard for medical suppliers. The scorecard evaluates the environmental and health impacts of products. Read the rest of this entry »

Employees at CIGNA now know they can take their CEO at his word when he talks about strengthening the company’s “culture of service.”

Effective July 1, the company’s 26,000 employees will be given eight hours of paid time off each year to volunteer with various not-for-profit health and community service organizations. That works out to more than 200,000 hours of time they can volunteer to make a collective difference in communities throughout the United States. Read the rest of this entry »

From turning cooking oil into bio-fuel and potatoes into gas, McDonald’s Corporation is employing a variety of sustainable practices in its supply chain and restaurants. These practices are highlighted in the “Global Best of Green”, updated from 2009, and the “Best of Sustainable Supply”, both of which can both be accessed or downloaded as PDFs at a new interactive website. Read the rest of this entry »

In today’s challenging economic environment, technology start-ups can struggle to bring new ideas to market. In response, Center member IBM has opened its resources to these companies in a new initiative to help this next generation of entrepreneurs capture emerging business opportunities in fast-growing industries such as energy and utilities, health care, telecommunications and government.

The IBM Global Entrepreneur initiative provides start-ups with no-charge access to industry-specific technologies in a cloud computing environment. Under the new program, IBM will provide access to its research community as well as sales, marketing and technical skills. Read the rest of this entry »

A few of the Center’s members have been talking about the Gulf Coast oil spill in our online Member Community, exploring ways that the corporate citizenship community can respond to the crisis. Most agree that assistance will be needed not only to clean up the area, but to help those whose livelihoods are going to be deeply affected. One person commented that this would be an excellent opportunity for schools to get involved in understanding and participating in activities supporting the environment.

Today the HandsOn Network blog provided information about their efforts to help in the clean-up, including links to volunteer organizations who are helping out: Read the rest of this entry »