Graeme Codrington suggests books on Classic FM

Graeme Codrington was recently interviewed on Classic FM’s “JSE Direct” show. It is a book review show, and Graeme highlighted two books he feels everyone should be reading, if they are interested in tracking key trends that will be shaping the world of work over the next 10-20 years.

They are: Ken Dytchwald, “Age Power” (Buy it at Amazon) and James Martin, “The Meaning of the 21st Century” (Buy it at Amazon or Kalahari).

Subscribe to out PodCast feed to listen to the interview:

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How to cut costs and keep your employees

The million dollar question I hear you sigh as you see the subject of this blog. Let’s face it, there are no easy answers, no silver bullets and certainly no one-size-fits-all approach to cutting costs and keeping a high people-morale during an economic un-boom, such as the one we’re wading through at the moment.

But there are some stories worth hearing, if not for anything but simply to celebrate that someone may be getting it right in their context. They know their people and their culture, and they’ve successfully created a solution that snugly fits both.

Click here to read a short article of some of these stories. The one that most impacted me was the ‘Ricardo Semler‘ type approach of the opening story in the article:

Go to the people and ask them! Sounds so simple. But so very difficult to execute.

Can advertising be too effective?

Here is a great marketing case study. Swedish Airport Coaches conducted a study and determined that a bus trip save the equivalent of 50 car trips. They built an outdoor advertising display comprising of a bus built out of 50 disused cars. The advert has been hugely successful. It touches on carbon emissions issue which is topical, but more importantly the display is cleverly put together and became such an entertainment and item of interest, that it resulted in traffic jams! This advert touches at the heart of how to connect with younger generations. Here are some marketing tips for connecting with Gen X and Millennials which this advertising campaign does well:

- entertain them
- create campaigns that make them think
- dont make the message obvious
- use juxtaposition – and make things appear not as they are
- use humour and paradox

You can watch the video here: 50 cars or 1 bus?

PWC “Millennials at work” survey

The “Millennials at Work” research to be published by PricewaterhouseCoopers later this year is based on survey responses from over 4200 graduates in 44 countries (click here to see last year’s survey). The headline results include some interesting insights into how this younger generation thinks about ethics and their company.

Young members of staff especially want ethical employers and training, and will work for less pay if treated well. While 61% of employers worldwide say they have challenges recruiting and keeping young employees, new research shows that the young – far from being the self-centred job-hoppers employers depict them as – are idealists who want ethical employers.

In a key finding, 88% of young staff say they want employers with corporate social responsibility (CSR) values that reflect their own. Additionally, 86% would consider leaving an employer whose CSR values no longer reflected theirs. An employer’s policy on climate change is seen as important or very important by most graduates globally (58%).

Everybody’s singing this song

Candle – earth hour

Great TV ad for Earth Hour. Gets everything right from a Gen X and Gen Y perspective… connects with their values, entertains and keeps them intrigued…(which is important because as adverts go it is long…a 90 seconds ad!) leaves them hanging on to find out more, very good use of music. Well done leo burnett and WWF… getting fab customer reviews on you tube too

click here to view advert

Reducing carbon by charging companies in the UK

Are you prepared for the Carbon Reduction Commitment? This is the title of an article about Britain’s plan to force companies, organisations, institutions and authorities to reduce their energy usage over the next few years. Many organisations don’t know that they will be required to report to – and pay significant amounts of money to – the CRC fund.

Very simply, if the organisation you are part of – including all subsidiaries, locations and facilities COMBINED – use more than 6,000 MWh per year of electricity (that’s about £ 500,000), then you’re part of the scheme. NOTE that this applies to all parts of your organisation. So, it applies to a local authority, which must total up all buildings, schools, etc. It applies to universities, which must total up all buildings, residences and facilities. It applies to companies that have mutliple branches or multiple locations. This is a crucial aspect of the scheme!

If this is an issue for you, please read the original article here, or below. I consult to a company called SEDS (Sustainable Energy Design Solutions) that can provide more information and assistance on this issue. Contact me if you want more info.

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The green industry and the recession

The “green” industry – a catchall phrase that refers to alternative energy creation, environmentally friendly products and low carbon upgrades to infrastructure – is growing. With some setbacks due to a low oil price, the sector nevertheless offers great business opportunities.

The European Commission is to invest €105 billion (£97 billion) in green projects in its latest budget – almost triple the amount earmarked in the last round. This is a massive increase on the 2000-2006 allocation. It will be invested through the EU Cohesion Fund and amounts to almost a third of the regional policy budget for the period 2007-2013.

Part of the reason for the focus on green industries is that this is a growing sector. The low carbon sector is currently worth over £3bn in the UK – the country that has taken a lead in these issues. UK consumers spent £4.3bn on low carbon goods in 2008. Internationally, the sector has grown by 40% in the last year alone, and, even during the recession, growth remains strong. Gordon Brown has expressed hope that this sector will create 400,000 jobs in the next decade.

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Move beyond simply maximising shareholder wealth

It is no longer ‘cool’ to say your company’s mission is to make money and maximize shareholder wealth. Although many companies pretend that they have a more noble purpose, their actions, processes, controls, hierarchy, behaviour of management and treatment of their employees reveals that maximizing returns is actually still their number 1 priority. 

In his recent article in the Harvard Business Review, Gary Hamel passionately believes that any company, whose primary mission is to make money and enhance the bottom line, is misunderstanding the role and responsibility of business in the 21^st century.

Hamel says:

 Most companies strive to maximize shareholder wealth—a goal that is inadequate in many respects. As an emotional catalyst, wealth maximization lacks the power to fully mobilize human energies. It’s an insufficient defense when people question the legitimacy of corporate power. And it’s not specific or compelling enough to spur renewal. For these reasons, tomorrow’s management practices must focus on the achievement of socially significant and noble goals.

Many companies have jumped on the social responsibility bandwagon and attached green, sustainability statements to their mission.  They monitor their carbon footprint and make a fuss of donations and good deeds for charities.  That is a good start but it is not enough.  Companies need to embed citizenship and community into the fabric of their vision.  What is your company’s mission aside from making money?  How do you make a difference to the customers you serve?  My husband works at a global professional services firm and does not know what their vision is aside from making cash.  That is probably one of the main reasons why they struggle to differentiate and manage talent.

Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Google, Disney and Amazon have a vision beyond making money and their employees can articulate it.  These employees feel as if they are making a difference – they know they are more than robotic cogs in a vast money making machine.  That is why these companies are often used as case studies for customer and employee engagement. If banks had a socially responsible vision beyond making money, we probably would not be in the pickle we currently find ourselves. 

We put so much pressure on politicians to solve community problems but often forget that corporations have an inherent advantage over elected public servants.  CEOs and their companies have a capacity to do good that often outweighs that of national politicians.

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Being a “Best Company to Work For” helps during a recession

Here’s an interesting piece of information:

According to the UK 2009 Best Companies to Work For survey only 37% of employees in three-star accredited companies – the top award for engagement – are worried about the impact of the current economic climate on their organisation’s future. The proportion grows to two-thirds of staff in companies that did not achieve the accreditation and over half in firms with one star.

Jonathan Austin, chief executive of Best Companies, said: “Those employees who feel involved and committed to their organisation feel more confident about their organisation’s future in these uncertain times – putting their companies in the best position to survive the recession.”

Of the 795 organisations that applied for UK Best Companies accreditation this year, 639 made the grade. Three-star status was given to 55 firms – including Nando’s, Pannone LLP and Office Angels.

A poem about the state of the world

hieroglyphic stairway
by Drew Dellinger

it’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something
when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?

what did you do
once
you
knew?

I’m riding home on the Colma train
I’ve got the voice of the milky way in my dreams

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Hot, Flat and Crowded

I am a big fan of Thomas Friedman.  He wrote the bestseller ‘The World is Flat’ and has recently published a new book called, ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’. 

Follow this link to an hour-long presentation by Thomas Friedman. I read ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’ in two weeks so, if you don’t have time on your hands, I highly recommend you watch this talk.  It is a fascinating, thought-provoking study of petropolitics, climate change, globalization and other similar themes.

On Saturday, I went to the local shopping mall in Wimbledon, London.  The central heating was so hot that it gave me a headache and I started to sweat in my big anorak.  The temperature of the entire centre is regulated centrally.rent a car bulgaria  While in the hair salon, I noticed it was a little cooler.  My hairdresser explained why – the air conditioner was on.  So the mall turns up the heating and the individual shops turn up their air conditioners. I am now writing to the mall management to complain about the unnecessary waste of precious energy and that is thanks to the insight I got from Thomas Friedman’s book.  It explained the implications of a hot, flat and crowded world and it scares me.  It will scare you too.

What Consumers Really Think of Green PR

Here’s a great little entry from BNET Insights – read it here.

Here’s a quiz: which of the following environmental terms resonates most strongly with consumers:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I was sent this short email about Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who died on Sunday, aged 89. I thought I’d share it.

His outspoken criticism of communist totalitarianism earned him many years of imprisonment in Stalin’s infamous Gulags and many more years in exile. His rare courage was underpinned by an unshakable commitment to truth and a deep sense of life purpose.

He was, however, also no advocate of the Western model, believing that Western society was eroding due to its whimsical pursuit of material well-being, its valuing of rights over obligations, and its misguided granting of destructive & irresponsible freedoms. Here are the closing words of his famous address “A World Split Apart” at Harvard University, 30 years ago. His questions are hardly less relevant to us today:

“Our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. … Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity? … We shall have to rise to a new height of vision … No-one on earth has any other way left but upward.”

Cement Usage

Here’s a link worth following. It contains a few images of cement usage around the world by the big users. China’s usage for the past 4 years is staggering.

We all know this, but seeing it in this particular format leaves you with your mouth hanging wide open. It certainly did for me.

I’ve not been to China. I can’t imagine what must be going on to be using this kind of volume?

Dwindling global electricity supply

I live and work between Johannesburg and London. For the past few months, South Africa has been plagued by the short supply of electricity. This is due to lack of planning for the sustained economic boom we have experienced over the past decade. As early as 1998, forecasters were warning that South Africa would run out of electricity in about 2007. Well, to be clear – that we would reach the point where demand and supply were so closely aligned that any blip in the system would result in blackouts. That is precisely what happened.

The problem should soon be resolved by the opening of new power stations (they take some time to build!) and the recommissioning of old power stations that had been mothballed. In this respect, South Africa is not unlike other countries that have experienced electricity shortages due to economic growth and bad planning. Recent examples include Brazil, Russia, Indonesia and California.

I am planning to spend the next 3-4 years in my London base, but it seems I will not escape the power problem. According to The Economist, England faces the same dark future. The expected date of blackouts – 2012. Just in time for the Olympics in London.

Read the article here (subscription may be required), or an excerpt below.

Green and black
A looming supply crunch causes problems for a government with green ambitions

Apr 3rd 2008
From The Economist print edition

RHETORIC is a sad fact of political life, and most voters are smart enough to know that grand promises made in the heat of a parliamentary debate or an election battle should be taken with a pinch of salt. But on energy policy the gap between claim and reality is now wide enough to be embarrassing. Grandiose pronouncements about climate change (“our greatest obligation to future generations”, according to Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer) stand incongruously next to Britain’s anaemic record on cutting its greenhouse-gas emissions, which have stayed stubbornly unchanged for years.

That has led to much rancour, with greens accusing the government of “betrayal”. And in the midst of all this acrimony another problem looms: Britain is beginning to run short of electricity. Reversing this trend seems likely to turn up the heat even more.

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Activists and companies can co-operate

The Economist recently ran a fascinating little piece on how activists and companies need to work towards a common outcome and goal. Read it here (subscription may be required) – or an extract below. It may be idealistic, but it is a wonderful goal to have, and certainly is a requirement if we are really going to change the world.

Strange bedfellows

Companies as activists
May 22nd 2008

LAST month Tom Katzenmeyer, vice-president of investor relations at Limited Brands, met representatives of the government of the Canadian province of Alberta. Limited Brands is an American apparel firm with sales of $10.1 billion last year; its best-known division is Victoria’s Secret, which sells lingerie. And what was the topic of discussion? The firm’s worries over threatened caribou habitats.

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Good with Money

Our global research has long been indicating that companies who concentrate more on who they are and less on what they sell will gain the competitive edge over their competitors.

The “who you are” is defined by the values a company lives by and how effectively the company’s values connect with the talent staff that work for them and the valuable customers that continue to shop with them.

One of the values that companies need to be demonstrating today is that of being ethically conscious. And this means more than just changing to efficient green light bulbs! It means living by the value…making business decisions, both strategic and operational, against the value even if it hurts the bottom line.

I came across a company that is doing great stuff in this sphere. Have a look at their marketing campaign The Co-Operative Bank is really promoting who they are and what they stand for, and most importantly their claims are back by some substantial meaningful and significant claims. They have turned down over £700m in revenue based on ethical decisions… now that is putting your money where your mouth is and living by the values they subscribe to. Impressive!!!

I’ll be reviewing this campaign and the company’s operations over the next few weeks and trying to find out more about their results, but I’ll stick my neck out here and make a prediction that their values based campaign is having a fantastic response from the Millennial, Gen X and Boomer generations, a unique achievement.

Competing for Eco tourists

The Strategy+Business blog and website always has insightful content. It’s the online moutpiece of consulting giant, Booz Allen Hamilton, so that should be no surprise. Subscribe to their e-zine here.

This month’s “Leading Idea” was about eco tourism, and how to maintain a competitive advantage in this space. There are lessons for every business trying to use corporate social responsibility as a strategic tool. Read the full article here, or see a summary below.

Competing on the Eco Front
by Jürgen Ringbeck and Stephan Gross

4/01/08
Environmentally friendly countries have a leg up in the competition for international travelers, but sustaining that advantage takes work.

Why do travelers — be they on business or just visiting — prefer to go to Switzerland rather than, say, Ukraine? It’s no surprise: Switzerland offers a much more attractive combination of factors. It’s easy to get there and to travel within the country, it’s clean and visitors feel safe there, and Switzerland’s combination of traditional culture and natural beauty is justly famed all over the world. Yet the continued popularity of Switzerland and other desirable destinations is by no means a given. Maintaining the relative purity of the environment while promoting and growing tourism is critical as competition intensifies among regions to attract the ever-growing number of travelers.

A recent study by Booz Allen Hamilton (part of the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2008) found that environmental factors may determine whether travel and tourism sectors thrive or falter in the coming years. The report evaluated the health of the tourism industry in 130 countries based on 14 pillars important to travelers, private operators, and public authorities — including regulatory framework, infrastructure, and cost to natural, cultural, and human resources. This year, for the first time, the index also ranked each country according to its environmental sustainability. Among the items examined were the stringency of environmental regulations and the extent to which they are enforced, carbon dioxide emission levels, and the percentage of the country’s species that are endangered.

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Answering the climate sceptics

The BBC News website recently carried a great article about climate change and answers for the sceptics. It is available online here, or read a summary below.

What are some of the reasons why “climate sceptics” dispute the evidence that human activities such as industrial emissions of greenhouse gases and deforestation are bringing potentially dangerous changes to the Earth’s climate?

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finalises its landmark report for 2007, we look at 10 of the arguments most often made against the IPCC consensus, and some of the counter-arguments made by scientists who agree with the IPCC.

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Olympics, controversy and you

The Olympic torch has left Athens, Greece on its traditional torch run around the world until it eventually arrives at the Beijing Olympic stadium during the opening ceremony. Right from the first day, it has been met with something that the Chinese officials did not anticipate: protestors. In an unprecendented move, the torch was actually extinguished in Paris so that it could be loaded onto a bus and rushed away from growing violence amongst the protestors. TV news scenes from London, Paris and San Francisco show police beating protestors, dragging them into prison vans and frog marching them away – none of these are scenes that add to the Olympic brand and mythos.

This is becoming a major news story – a BAD news story. It’s China Inc that’s on the receiving end. But it could be you and your company next. We have been saying for some time now that there is a new generation of young people and global citizens that are going to rise up and become activist customers and ethical consumers. This Olympics needs to be YOUR company’s wake up call that this can happen anytime, anywhere. You have been warned – get your act together, and ensure that all the skeletons in your closet are well sorted out!

Green Homes Concierge

At last, some smaller entrepreneurs are beginning to understand that there is a growing market for environmental products and services. One of the easiest and obvious ones is to help people who want to be greener to, well, be greener… with minimal fuss. It’s a simple concept, but not many people are doing it. I just picked up info on one such service in the UK, called Green Home Concierge. It looks good.

They’re not the first. They won’t be the last. But, at least they’re doing it. Well done!

Learning from Nature (and disaster)

“Learn lessons from nature”. That’s what the world’s top thinkers all say. We need to learn from the natural, interlaced connections of ecosystems. We need to learn from the complex communication systems and overlapping symbiotic creatures, and find lessons there for new ways to structure corporate systems. I agree. But the problem is that most of these theorists only talk about the “good” side of nature. They never seem to mention that nature is brutal, violent and unforgiving.

One example of this caught my eye in the latest Economist magazine, about a controlled flood of the Grand Canyon. Conservationists have long argued that seemingly devastating events are necessary for the proper long term functioning of ecosystems. Some seeds only germinate after a fire. Rivers need floods to wash them out. In nature, death always brings life. I wonder how that applies to the emerging “quantum” and “fractal” workplace?

Read the article at The Economist (subscription may be required), or see an extract below.
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Just Good Business

In The Economist on 17 January 2008, this article on corporate social responsibility, “Just good business” appeared. It is one of the best summaries of the current state of play in the CSR world. A must read. See the original article, or read an edited version below.

IN THE lobby at the London headquarters of Marks & Spencer, one of Britain’s leading retailers, the words scroll relentlessly across a giant electronic ticker. They describe progress against “Plan A”, a set of 100 worthy targets over five years. The company will help to give 15,000 children in Uganda a better education; it is saving 55,000 tonnes of CO2 in a year; it has recycled 48m clothes hangers; it is tripling sales of organic food; it aims to convert over 20m garments to Fairtrade cotton; every store has a dedicated “Plan A” champion.

The M&S ticker says a lot about the current state of what is commonly known as corporate social responsibility (CSR). First, nobody much likes the CSR label. A year ago M&S launched not a CSR plan but Plan A (“because there is no Plan B”). The chief executive’s committee that monitors this plan is called the “How We Do Business Committee”. Other companies prefer to describe this kind of thing as “corporate responsibility” (dropping the “social” as too narrow), or “corporate citizenship”, or “building a sustainable business”. One Nordic executive glories in the job title of director, accountability and triple-bottom-line leadership. All this is convoluted code for something simple: companies meaning (or seeming) to be good.

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Greenopolis

I was sent this PR release today. I signed up immediately – looks like fun!

People band together online to date, discuss politics or lose weight. Now a US website called Greenopolis has created a community whose members help each other live in a more earth-friendly manner. After registering on Greenopolis, which is still in beta, visitors complete an online survey that analyses their daily activities to determine how ‘green’ their lifestyle is. Based on the survey findings users receive a coloured badge, which shows other members just how much of a friend to the earth they really are. Orange badge holders need to clean up their environmental act, and solid green badge holders are on the right track.

By participating on the site, users are awarded points, which are displayed for other members to see (sometimes, peer pressure can be used for good). More points—and corresponding changes in badge colour—show that they’re becoming more environmentally responsible. Plus, when the site officially debuts, points can be used to receive discounts on sustainable products. Greenopolis founders also want to make the badges portable, so that members can post them on their blogs and social network pages.

A car for the people of the world

This is how new markets are made, and how worlds are changed! Today, Tata released their latest car. It was a car that all of their rivals said could not be made. About 5 years ago, Tata announced that were going to build a car that would cost less than 100,000 rupees, or US$ 2,500 (the price of a DVD player in most luxury cars).

Today, they unveiled it in India. See the early news reports here and here.

It is the Tata Nano. And, besides being a 5 door sedan, seating four, with just less than 650CC power, it also has remarkable fuel efficiency (20km/l), top speeds at 100km/h, meets all emissions standards and all safety standards, too. The deluxe model will have aircon. See the Reuters “factbox” for details. At this price, it is bound to be attractive to those who have not been able to enter the car market in the past.

It is no surprise that a car for the people in the “bottom half of the pyramid” should come out of India (see previous post on selling profitably to the world’s poor). For some, it may be a sad truth, but it is true nonetheless: unless companies make money out of supplying goods and services to the world’s poor, they won’t. But Tata shows yet another example of how this can be a win-win for everyone.

With a car like this, Tata will create a new market of car drivers, and are poised to conquer the world. I wish them well!

50 Ways to Green Your Business

Fast Company is a brilliant magazine. Their website is equally superb.

They recently had a massive feature article on ways to make your business more environmentally friendly. From: Issue 120 | November 2007 | Page 90 | By: Mark Borden, Jeff Chu, Charles Fishman, Michael A. Prospero, and Danielle Sacks

You can find the online version here. Or scroll down.

Imagine asking today how the Internet affects business. It’s an absurd question, like asking how electricity changed business. Asking the same about sustainability, it turns out, is equally absurd. Like the Internet, sustainability spurs innovation in everything, from how you see your business model to whether you see your employees (why not let them work at home more?). Here are our favorite ways companies today are greening up–and saving money and making better widgets in the process.

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Graeme & Hannah’s Rules featured on SusBiz podcast

If you’re interested in that sort of thing, then I was recently interviewed in the UK by Anthony Day – a long time sustainable business advocate. You can hear the podcast of three interviews he did on the day by going to his website.

It’s also a nice summary of my latest presentation, Hannah’s Rules.

The Earth has Soul

I was sent this recently. It was written by an engineer from Venmyn, a big South African mining consulting company.

Are Geologists Goofy Enough? By Fiona Harper

At Venmyn, when our esteemed, eccentric colleagues come up with mad-cap mining methods or weird deposits, we have the tendency to shrug and exclaim just a goofy geologist. Well, maybe I have lived too long in Knysna, where tree-hugging and boom-smoking are normal, but my own goofy tendencies are alive and well. I have been casually reading laymans versions of the latest research in that queen of the sciences, physics, as well as in medicine and biology. Each of these has seen some significant re-adjustments in their views of the world, even if they are not fully accepted theories.

The inadequacy of the theory of relativity to fully explain observable and theoretical events has been recognised. The latest string theory and identification of eleven dimensions has certainly expanded our concepts of the material universe. The recognition that the smallest building block of the universe is a particle of energy and that everything is built from this same energy in different configurations, has massive ramifications.

Basically the weirdos and gurus have been saying for two thousand years that we are all one and physics is starting to wonder if they may not have a point. Medicine has seen that the body cannot be adequately understood in terms of a purely bio-chemical system but that mind exists throughout every cell in the body and that soul and spirit have powerful, unpredictable influences.

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Planet in Peril on CNN

I am sitting watching a documentary series on CNN, by Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Cupta, called “Planet in Peril”. See the related website here.

It starts as a list of climate change issues, from melting ice caps to rising sea levels, disappearing lakes to heating islands and malaria. It’s a great litany of the disaster awaiting us, and spans the globe. It would be tough to argue that we are in midst of a climate change crisis.

The question remains, though – are we causing it? Can we change it? What must we do? These questions are dealt with in the show, too.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN sponsored largest scientific report on climate change ever published, was released earlier this year. This is the group that won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Check out their website here. It’s tough to argue with the evidence presented in their reports. But some do, of course, especially those funded by big energy companies that have the most to lose from a global backlash against companies causing climate change.

This is a good documentary. Check it out.

Their website also gives great resources for students.

Why Ethical Consumption is Taking Off

Dr Graeme Codrington’s latest presentation is called “Hannah’s Rules” which alerts companies to an essential emerging trend: the ethical consumer. In this article, he explains WHY ethical consumption is such a growing trend.

Why Ethical Consumption is Taking Off

By Dr Graeme Codrington

Today’s consumers are not just looking for a good product at a fair price. They are looking beyond the product or service to the ethics of the company that supplies it. The symptoms of this shift in focus by consumers is evident in the concerns that these customers have about the companies they purchase from. There is growing interest, for example, in labour practices, diversity quotas, environmental policies, social responsibility, and even CEO salaries are under scrutiny.

So-called “triple bottom line” reporting, which gets companies to present not just financial results, but also social and environmental results and impact, too, is one way in which corporates are trying to respond. And they need to respond because are voicing their concerns, in everything from boycotting stores to suing corporations. Companies like Ford, Gap, Nike, Walmart and KfC have all experienced the wrath of ethical consumers in recent years, and have been forced to respond quickly to protect their reputations and their very existence as companies.

This growing emphasis on ethical consumption is a trend that cannot be ignored. It is not going to go away. There are some important changes in the world that provide indications that ethical consumers will continue to be a growing force in the next few decades. Companies would do well to understand this trend, and be proactive in dealing with it.

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