At the Center’s 2009 International Corporate Citizenship Conference, Tony Wagner provided an energetic lesson on what’s wrong with education in American schools. Speaking during the final keynote session on business and education, Wagner began by explaining that “in education we frequently start with solutions to problems we don’t completely understand.” He labeled this phenomenon “answer-itis.” Read the rest of this entry »

Like the regulars at a local diner, companies now must be willing to try something different in changing times. Community involvement is still on the menu at the corporate citizenship café but the trans-fat is gone and the recipe is a little different.

This evolution has been a major focus of the Community Involvement Leadership Roundtable. Read the rest of this entry »

Well I’m back on campus and the jet lag has worn off but I’m still feeling the sting of the reality slap administered by John Elkington in his remarks Monday evening in San Francisco.

In stark contrast with the spirit of hope that surrounded the conference, the man described by BusinessWeek as “the dean of the corporate responsibility movement” delivered a reminder that our economic condition may not be getting better any time soon, and may well get considerably worse for an extended period. Read the rest of this entry »

The following post by Dave Stangis, vice president, Corporate Social Responsibility, Campbell Soup Company, is excerpted from his blog:

I’m on my way home from the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship’s International Corporate Citizenship Conference that was held earlier this week in San Francisco. I can’t remember the last time I just attended a conference – and this time was no different. I participated on three panels as well as in the Center’s Board meeting that followed the conference. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you have ego maturity or optimistic passion? How about collaborative empathy or peripheral vision? These are just a few of the terms discussed in the conference session, “What will it take? Corporate Citizenship Competencies for the 21^st Century.” Read the rest of this entry »

In this breakout session I had the chance to hear researchers from McKinsey & Company and the Boston College Center share some of what they learned in their partnership that assessed the link between corporate citizenship and value creation.

Their research was based on 135 interviews with executives from the areas of CSR, sustainability, human resources, environment, strategy, finance and investor relations in 20 companies from 11 industries. This culminated in a report from the Boston College Center, “How Virtue Creates Value for Business and Society”. Read the rest of this entry »

With stress on corporate citizenship at an all-time high, will corporate citizenship break, bend or evolve?

That was the question three panelists – Microsoft’s Dan Bross, FedEx’s Rose Jackson Flenorl, and Ahold USA’s Harriet Hentges – were asked to answer.

All three, along with moderator Rick Martella of ARAMARK, are members of the Boston College Center’s Advisory Board. As such, they were asked to share the trends they are seeing, the new opportunities for citizenship to contribute to corporate health and reputation, and some of the tangible actions they’ve been taking to maximize the contribution that CSR can make to business. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t get me wrong: by calling myself “results-oriented,” I’m not trying to imply that I promote some sort of teleological approach to life and/or corporate citizenship; nor that I possess the “instant gratification” desires that conference presenter Tony Wagner appends to my generation’s learning/development style; nor that a “good” process is not important for achieving a “good” end. No, I’m merely saying that my neurological synapses, once fixed on a goal, are comfortable with a malleable, “learning-by-doing” sort of process. The more I stumble around in the dark in search of a light switch, the better I will be at helping others find their switch, or even the power-generator itself. Thankfully, the Boston College Center seems to realize this. Read the rest of this entry »