At Cummins Inc. they found a solution not by making a choice but by facing a challenge.

On the occasion of the company’s 90^th anniversary in 2009, 62 teams of Cummins employees from 11 different countries accepted a challenge to develop projects to improve the environment in their community.

The projects ranged in sophistication from simple recycling efforts to complex carbon footprint reducing initiatives.  When all was said and done, the 62 projects conserved an estimated 538 tons of greenhouse gases, the equivalent of 54,000 gallons of gasoline.

Cummins is a Fortune 500 company that designs, manufactures, sells and services diesel engines and related technology around the world. With headquarters in Columbus, Ind., Cummins serves its customers through its network of 500 company-owned and independent distributor facilities and more than 5,200 dealer locations in over 190 countries and territories with 40,000 employees worldwide.  Cummins focuses its corporate responsibility efforts on three priority areas: the environment, education and social justice/improving the human condition. The 62 projects that were part of the company’s 90^th Anniversary Environmental Challenge managed to hit every priority.

Here’s a sample of how:

• In India, the Kolha Rural Electrification team developed a way to power a rural village of 65 households by using Cummins generator sets running on locally available renewable energy — vegetable oil — produced from the Pongamia trees. The system at Kolha also holds the potential to create demand for greater quantities of vegetable oil for sale, creating an additional income source for villagers. The plan is to replicate this project in collaboration with the government in many remote Indian villages. 
• In Kent, England, the Inspire Orchard Project turned a 300-year-old disused orchard into a sensory and teaching garden for 120, disabled, deaf students. When completed, the work will allow plant life, wildlife and learning to flourish, giving some disabled students their best opportunity to experience nature.
• Problems with scarce drinking water were addressed by a project at the Wagholi School and Orphanage near Pune, India. Approximately 50 Cummins volunteers used rain water and ground water harvesting technologies to increase the level of the water table and make the surrounding areas greener. The project also simultaneously reduced the school’s economic burden and carbon footprint by providing an alternative to bringing in water tankers. 
• Cummins employees teamed up with the Parkview Villa affordable housing community for seniors and people with disabilities in Fridley, Minn., to increase recycling efforts by 50 percent. Working with residents to determine what they needed to participate in recycling, Cummins employees learned that connecting proceeds of recycling to the local Humane Society provided an additional incentive. And as the program grows, it can provide more employment opportunities through Rise, a local non-profit whose mission is to support people who have disabilities and other barriers to employment.

Cummins’ Environmental Challenge projects remind us that environmental issues and social problems all exist in the same world. It just takes an innovative approach to find where they intersect. It’s often the same place where solutions can be found.

Like many critics of CSR, Dr. Karnani’s world view remains firmly rooted in the 20^th century social contract where governments (supposedly) took care of social responsibility and business took care of business.  For Dr. Karnani, corporate social responsibility at its core is nothing more than a misguided distraction for business leaders and managers who should be focused on “profit maximization.”

While he acknowledges that companies sometimes can do well by doing good, his view is more often that they can’t, and furthermore postulates that this “makes it more likely that we’ll ignore the real solutions to these problems.” He argues that if business had a meaningful role to play then societies’ pervasive and persistent problems would have been solved long ago by companies seeking to maximize their profits.” In his view the “real” solution to societal problems is a return to a world of more government regulation and intervention. As he notes, government regulation’s “greatest appeal is that it is binding. Government has the power to enforce regulation. No need to rely on anyone’s best intentions.”   

While one can appreciate Dr Karnani’s desire for a simpler time where governments take care of society and business takes care of business, in reality we live in a much more complex world.

We are in an age where half of the world’s top economies and most influential institutions are now businesses. The power and speed of business far exceed the capacity of governments to keep pace on the regulatory front as the current global financial crisis clearly illustrates. When it comes to solving social challenges, again the capacity of governments to respond is increasingly limited. Governments struggling under mounting deficits are barely able to keep entitlement commitments they have to their constituents, never mind innovating to meet the complex social and environmental challenges of a global economy.

Indeed, if government intervention alone was sufficient to solve these problems then applying Dr. Karnani’s own logic we could assume they would have “been solved long ago by governments doing the job they were elected for.” In reality, through the work we do at the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship at the Carroll School of Management, we know the only way to find “real solutions” to complex social problems of the 21^st century is through new forms of collaboration between business, government and civil society.

Far from a distraction, corporate social responsibility is in fact the new essential for business strategy and success in the 21^st century. It is a strategic response to a business environment in which companies must earn their license to operate from a wide variety of well-informed publics and stakeholders whose expectations for social responsibility continue to grow. Failure to meet these expectations can result in loss of reputation and market share. Finally, it is a response to a vested interest in ensuring a trained and educated work force, safe communities and a stable global economy. The challenge for management strategists such as Dr. Karnani is to catch up to the real-world corporate social responsibility challenges that companies must now manage as an integrated part of business strategy and practice.

The CSR world is atwitter (literally and figuratively) about the opinion piece by Dr. Aneel Karnani, an associate professor of strategy at the University of Michigan. The headline alone was enough to prompt sharp responses to Karnani. But he really drew fire with remarks that the notion companies can pursue profits and seek to serve the public interest is an “illusion” that is “potentially dangerous;” and that when profit and public interest align “the idea of corporate social responsibility is irrelevant.”

Karnani sees government regulations as the “ultimate solution” to balancing profits and the public good and argues that CSR can in fact distract from more effective initiatives. “The only sure way to influence corporate decision making,” Karnani wrote, “is to impose an unacceptable cost—regulatory mandates, taxes, punitive fines, public embarrassment—on socially unacceptable behavior.”

To no surprise, shortly after the special section of the WSJ hit the street, virtual steam could be seen rising from the CSR regions of the blogosphere and twitterverse. Some initial responses to Karnani’s comments may even have had Michigan officials expecting an angry mob descending on the Ann Arbor campus with torches and pitchforks.

Fortunately, cooler heads have prevailed among the corporate citizenry. What follows is a sampling of comments, rebuttals and criticisms from bloggers and others offering more thoughtful responses to Dr. Karnini.

Aman Singh: Vault CSR blog
Singh contends that Karnani misrepresents the work of CSR professionals and displays an outdated point of view. Singh collected thoughts on Karnani’s comments from a number of professionals including Dave Stangis of Campbell Soup and Brian Wasson of SAP.

Leon Kaye: triplepundit
Kaye takes issue with Karnani calling regulation the ultimate solution for balancing profits and public good, noting that regulation can have devastating consequences for communities it is intended to help when businesses respond by moving out of town.

Dave Douglas: GreenBiz.com
Douglas points out that Karnani’s position ignores CSR’s role as a tool to identify risks and opportunities for the business, and that it is CSR professionals who often flag potential environmental risks and advocate market opportunities that otherwise might be missed.

Mallen Baker: Ethical Corporation
Baker questions Karnani’s argument that pits the pursuit of profit vs. corporate social responsibility as a goal, and notes that businesses have been successful without and with a commitment to social responsibility. He disputes the notion of CSR as a distraction and sees it as a means to promote the kind of healthy society, economy and environment that allows business to thrive.

Doug Bannerman: GreenBiz.com
Bannerman disputes Karnani’s contention that a focus on anything other than maximizing profits, such as CSR issues, is shirking fiduciary duty to shareholder interest. He raises the argument that, on the contrary, investors consider CSR issues to be relevant to financial performance and good governance as they can be tied to significant risks and opportunities for the business.

Click here to see our own blog response from executive director Katherine Smith.

While the headline of that article is admittedly unfortunate, Karnani is not advocating for irresponsible behavior by corporations. He advocates for aligning business strategy with the public good when possible. He touts government regulation as the “ultimate solution” to balancing profits and the public interest when profit-seeking methods may be at odds with the public good. “The only sure way to influence corporate decision making,” Karnani wrote, “is to impose an unacceptable cost – regulatory mandates, taxes, punitive fines, public embarrassment – on socially unacceptable behavior.”

We all long for a world where alignment of interests is so great, regulation so effective, and social and environmental ills so minimal that corporate social responsibility is assumed and examination of its role is irrelevant or obsolete. In the meantime, Dr. Karnani himself points out significant deficits in our current legal, regulatory and social paradigm and proposes ONE solution out of many possible by emphasizing regulation. We are working today under assumptions about markets and social norms that evolved in a simpler time and that may not be true in the 21^st century of “too big to fail,” environmental stress, and globally networked corporate operations (read people). With all of the complexity, potentially conflicting values and norms, and resulting ambiguity that exist in our globally networked world, any discussion that seeks to establish productive strategies for sustaining business and society or minimum standards of acceptable behavior is welcomed by leaders and employees of corporations alike.

Companies are full of people who work to deliver long-term value and preserve the natural and social environment that makes value-creation and enjoyment of life possible. At the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship at the Carroll School of Management, more than 350 member companies and thousands of individuals participate in programs, access research, and share best practices that they can use to align their CSR and profit strategies. Dialogue about how to achieve the greatest value most effectively is part of the process of determining what actions we can take to serve our mutual interests. No company can solve all the world’s ills, but each can contribute a bit by focusing on where they or their employees can make a difference, whether it is by being a better employer, a more responsible steward of resources, a contributor to healthy and safe consumer habits, or as a supporter of community needs.

Companies can and do make positive contributions whether they are B Corporations or publicly traded giants. Any examination of ideas that creates dialogue that helps us figure out how we make business and society better – together – is good.

How do job seekers and business school graduates view the rising awareness around concepts like triple bottom line, corporate responsibility, and ethical management? I conducted a series of interviews with four MBA candidates whose focus in graduate school is on corporate social responsibility (CSR): Ashley Jablow, Geetanjali Singh, Whit Tice and Larry Furman. (See below for more about each of the students.)

None of the graduates started business school with CSR in mind: Ashley Jablow’s background is in nonprofit fund raising [Editor’s note: you may remember Ashley from our 2010 Conference, which she blogged and tweeted about]; Geetanjali Singh worked in technical training and communication; Whit Tice specialized in project management and quality testing; Larry Furman spent almost three decades in IT and database administration.

For each of the four, the motivation for attending business school stemmed from a recognition that they needed to expand their skill sets. But what prioritized their focus toward CSR was the realization that its core principles were the necessary bridge between civic and corporate good. As Jablow put it, “My initial thoughts were in the direction of corporate philanthropy. It was really through all the core classes and business training I realized that CSR is an incredible opportunity for there to be alignment between business, community and environmental goals—that there really are opportunities to create those win-wins, where a business can be about making money and be a good corporate citizen.”

2008′s spectacular collapse of revered Wall Street institutions like Lehman Brothers helped underscore their interest. Both Singh and Jablow noticed that conversations inside and outside the classroom were increasingly veering toward questions of ethical mismanagement, risky and unsustainable behavior, and short-term decision making, often leading to lengthy debates on responsible business practices. Many times, these extended to self-doubt and asking themselves what this meant for their personal career objectives. As they watched the financial industry get drastically reshaped, students like Tice refocused their career trajectory to align with personal priorities.

For Geet Singh, the transition from mere interest in CSR to core career focus was enhanced by the essay-writing pre-admission process. Much like Jablow, for Singh it made the perfect link between corporate and social. “My work with Cisco had allowed me some insight into their exemplary corporate responsibility initiatives and I decided to talk about social entrepreneurship in my essays. My niche became helping companies do CSR as well as helping the community who needs it the most and becoming that link between corporate and social.”

Tice, with a few more years of work experience under his belt than Jablow and Singh, connects corporate responsibility with his penchant for systems thinking. He explained: “While you may understand the three Ps, it’s what happens next that is important. This comes about by taking different facets of organizational life and applying a wider range of thinking that goes beyond questioning ‘Should I use paper cups instead of Styrofoam cups because that’s bad for the environment?‘ to ‘Are we going to create more waste with these paper cups? Will the transportation costs and emissions that the paper cups require to get here actually be more waste or harm to the environment than, say, using the Styrofoam cups?‘”

In the end, he said, it’s simply about a shift from simple thinking to complex and long-term thinking because of a realization that the tradeoffs are not usually simple and transparent.

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*Ashley Jablow graduated from Boston University’s School of Management with an MBA in CSR Marketing, Communications and Strategy in May, 2010. She is actively engaged in discussing CSR through Twitter and her blog, The Changebase. Currently, she is looking for a fulltime job in corporate responsibility in the San Francisco area.

Geetanjali ‘Geet’ Singh graduated in June 2010 from University of California-Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business with a concentration on CSR, general management and strategy. Formerly from Mumbai, India, Singh is currently looking for a corporate responsibility job in Orange County, California and hopes that Silicon Valley will wake up to the business value in CSR. Connect with her on Twitter.

Whit Tice graduated with an MBA from Case Western’s Weatherhead School of Management in 2008 and decided to back it up with a Master’s in Positive Organizational Development and Change, also from Case Western, which he completed in 2009. Whit is currently with consulting firm Logic 20/20, where he is a Change Management Senior Consultant, and continues to discuss systems thinking and organizational development through his blog, The Organizational Strategist.

Larry Furman is a Sustainability Consultant and currently pursuing an MBA in managing for sustainability from Marlboro College. He is a member of the program’s first graduating class and is looking forward to combining his experience in IT with his passion for sustainable energy and green solutions.

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Here are links to the other posts in this series.

Job Hunting in CSR Part 1: Will the Recession Serve As a Tipping Point for Corporate Responsibility?

Job Hunting in CSR, Part 2: Connecting Corporate Responsibility with Career Objectives

Job Hunting in CSR, Part 3: After All Is Said and Done, Where Are The Jobs?

Job Hunting in CSR: What’s Next for These MBA Graduates?

And finally the blog that motivated this series: Does CSR Matter in Your Job Search?

According to the Foundation Center, the new statistics may come as a surprise given both the across-the-board reductions in corporate earnings and the large share of giving – typically about one-quarter – historically accounted for by corporate foundations from the banking and finance sector. This finding suggests that, as with other types of foundations, corporate foundations were also making exceptional efforts to minimize reductions in giving during the economic crisis, despite the need to cut expenses as profits slumped.

The relatively less severe reduction in giving reported by corporate foundations is consistent with the findings from the Boston College Center’s 2009 State of Corporate Citizenship report, which found that despite upheaval in the economy, a majority of U.S. companies did not make major changes in their corporate citizenship practices.

Looking ahead, three out of five (60 percent) corporate foundations responding to the Foundation Center’s annual forecasting survey expect to either increase or maintain their giving in 2010.

For more information view the Foundation Center report, Key Facts on Corporate Foundations.

USA Today reported that universities and colleges are putting on the green to attract students who are serious about environmental issues. Mark Orlowski, founder and executive director of the Massachusetts-based Sustainable Endowments Institute, told the newspaper that the trend is growing at schools large and small “as a way of attracting the best students possible.” According to the Institute’s 2010 College Sustainability Report Card, 69 percent of colleges and universities were incorporating a sustainability message during the admissions and student orientation processes.

A separate USA Today story notes that two-thirds of students surveyed for the Princeton Review’s recent College Hopes and Worries report said a college’s “environmental commitment” would be a factor in where they applied.

Fast forward four years and an effective message about environmental commitment could work for companies looking to attract top young graduates as employees.

The value of corporate citizenship efforts in finding and keeping top-notch employees is becoming clear to a growing number of companies. The Boston College Center’s upcoming Profile of the Practice report will include survey results showing that 59.1 percent of respondents cite employee retention and recruitment as one of their companies’ top three explicit business-related goals of their corporate citizenship strategy.

And it would seem the majority of companies can just stay the course with their corporate citizenship approach in order to capitalize on the drawing power of green. The 2010 Profile of the Practice echoes other surveys in identifying environmental sustainability as a top focus of companies’ corporate citizenship agendas. Based on responses to the Profile of the Practice survey, environmental impact/sustainability is covered in the strategies of 73.5 percent of companies that have a strategy. In addition, protecting the environment is rated as one of the top three social/environmental goals of corporate citizenship strategies.

Beyond providing an obvious benefit to Mother Earth, companies that operate with the environment in mind may be able to reap business benefits when it comes time to harvest the next crop of corporate leaders.

Look for release of the full 2010 Profile of the Practice report this fall.

“At Kohl’s we are … giving back to the communities that we serve. As kids and parents think about the new school year, we want everyone to dream big about how half-a-million dollars could impact their favorite school,” said Julie Gardner, Kohl’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “We believe that when communities thrive so does business. This program… [is] the cornerstone of the company’s Back-to-School campaign.”

How the Kohl’s Cares for Kids $10M Giveback works for contest participants

Kohl’s is asking its Facebook fans, which currently number more than 1 million, what their school could do with half-a-million dollars. Through Sept. 3, 2010, students and school supporters can visit www.facebook.com/kohls to share with the online community what their school could do with the additional funding. They can also cast their vote there for their favorite public or private schools that serve K-12 students. A winning school must have a least one submission about how the funds might be used. Fans can vote up to 20 times for their favorite elementary, middle or high schools, with a maximum of five votes for any individual school.

The top 20 vote-getting schools must meet contest criteria as outlined in the official rules and have school officials provide information on how their schools will use the money to support educational programs or initiatives. Winning schools will be announced in late September.

Supporting the Back-to-School campaign

The $10M Giveback Contest is the heart of this specialty department store’s Back-to-School campaign and will be supported by national advertising, direct mail, digital marketing, public relations and more. Components of the campaign include:

• Online/Digital components: Coinciding with the program launch, the contest will be supported with Facebook advertising and e-mails to Kohl’s customers.
• In-store presentations: Kohl’s customers will see the contest promoted in Kohl’s stores nationwide through store signage, receipt messaging and more.
• Television advertising: National and Hispanic brand spots will begin airing in July and run through the end of August.
• Print advertising: Inclusion of the contest in Kohl’s print advertising will start in mid-July and run throughout the voting period.
• Direct mail: Kohl’s will reach customers directly through various direct mail pieces starting in July and continuing through mid-August.

The $10 million donation comes from the Kohl’s Cares® cause merchandise program, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kohl’s Department Stores, Inc. Kohl’s has raised more than $150 million for children’s health and education initiatives nationwide by donating 100 percent of the net profits of the program’s specialty merchandise, which include plush toys and books. In addition to Kohl’s Cares®, this organization’s philanthropic endeavors include: a scholarship program that has awarded more than $2.2 million in scholarships and prizes and will donate an additional $410,000 to kids this year; Kohl’s associate volunteer program that donated more than $10 million to nonprofits nationwide last year; and a fundraising gift card program.

For more information on Kohl’s philanthropic efforts, visit www.kohls.com/cares.

New Academy combines on-campus instruction with distance learning

The best and the brightest in any field are not accomplished because they’ve learned it all. What makes them stand out as leaders is a desire to keep learning.

In that spirit, the Boston College Center has created the innovative Community Involvement Leadership Academy scheduled to launch this fall. Designed for the most seasoned veterans of corporate community involvement, the Academy combines an intensive on-campus program with a four-month distance learning program. In both the on-campus and off-campus portions, participants will learn through instruction by experienced adjunct faculty and guest speaker practitioners, as well as by sharing experiences with fellow community involvement leaders attending the Academy.

The Academy is being launched at a time when globalization, economic policy and changing demographics – among other issues – are changing the relative roles of business, government and civil society. More is expected and required of business and, as a result, the bar for community involvement continues to rise. Reflecting the words of President Kennedy that “leadership and learning are indispensable to each other,” the Community Involvement Leadership Academy will help even the most experienced professionals meet this new challenge.

Center Managing Director Peggy Connolly describes the Academy as “a first-of-its-kind learning program.  Participants will have an unprecedented opportunity to draw on the experiences and knowledge of faculty, researchers and peers to advance themselves, their companies and the field.”

The inaugural session of the Academy will be held at the Lynch Center in the heart of the Boston College Carroll School of Management. The four-and-a-half-day on-campus portion of the Academy will draw on recent Center research focused on leadership competencies for community involvement managers. This research has examined what attributes are required to excel as a community involvement leader. The On-Campus Academy, scheduled Nov. 8-12, 2010, will equip participants with tools, skills and strategies to help them take their leadership and influence – as well as community involvement in their companies – to the next level.

Upon completion of the On-Campus Academy, participants who want to earn a Certificate in Community Involvement Leadership from the Carroll School of Management must enter the Off-Campus Academy, a four-month distance learning program focused on real-world application of the new skills and strategies learned in the classroom here at Boston College.

But graduates of the On-Campus Academy will not be on their own when they leave campus. The input they receive from adjunct faculty members on campus will continue throughout the Off-Campus Academy, with each participant getting two hours of individualized instruction per month. An assigned adjunct faculty member will serve as sounding board for participants as they implement change at their companies and experiment with new practices learned through the Academy.

The peer learning that began on campus will also continue as part of the distance learning program. Off-Campus Academy participants will each be assigned to a 4-to-5 person team that will convene three times via teleconference to share experiences and collaborate on solutions to challenges. In addition, online networking via the Center’s Member Community will provide access to fellow community involvement leaders on a day-to-day basis. In order to effectively record application of new learning and practices and examine their outcome, Academy participants will be given an easy to use model for developing case examples of their leadership in action.

At the Center’s annual International Corporate Citizenship Conference in Minneapolis, April, 10, 2011, Academy graduates will share their experiences and receive a final round of feedback at a one-day leaders summit. Recipients of the Certificate in Community Involvement Leadership will be invited to the conference as guests of honor, with the registration fee waived, a savings of approximately $1,500.

Limited to 16 participants, enrollment in the on-campus and off-campus segments of the Community Involvement Leadership Academy is by application. To be eligible for acceptance, applicants must have at least five years experience in corporate community involvement, demonstrated expertise and sufficient scope of responsibility; or, have a Certificate in Community Involvement Management from Boston College and at least three years experience in community involvement. Click here for more information on the Academy, or contact Karen O’Malley at karen.omalley.2@bc.edu, 617-552-1553.

The Community Involvement Leadership Academy is just one of the programs featured in the Center’s newest catalog of management programs, which features a new mix of learning programs to better meet different learning styles and to increase accessibility to learning opportunities, from  2-1/2-day management development programs to an increasing array of one-day workshops and timely Webinars. Click here to download the complete catalog.

This term often invokes daunting thoughts of a clinical and painful process. I prefer to use a more accurate and descriptive term to address these concerns: “achieving exceptional performance.”

This is the primary objective of our upcoming workshop, Developing a Community Involvement Strategy, on September 22-24, 2010 in Dallas, TX. The workshop will help you develop an exceptional community involvement program. Whether you are just starting your community involvement program or desire to move your long-existing program to a higher level, this workshop is for you.

Achieving exceptional performance in community involvement requires more than just going through a planning process.  Planning tools for achieving exceptional performance will be provided, but that’s just the beginning. 

We will also share best practices, define organizational “hot buttons” to move your program to the forefront, explore critical trends, learn how to engage others in supporting community involvement, use a powerful problem solving tool to remove your greatest obstacles to achieving exceptional performance, explore our roles as community involvement professionals and more.

This is a “hands-on” workshop intended to help address the real challenges you face in developing an exceptional community involvement program. I always look forward to the exciting discussion and the sharing of ideas.

Hope to see you in Dallas.