Fabian Pattberg

Monthly Archives - August 2009

Sustainability News and Blogs Update – 29.08.2009

August 29, 20094:14 pm

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This week has been another interesting week and I have come across some interesting Sustainability/CSR news and blog posts. Here are my top 3 news items and blog posts of the week.

Enjoy!

Top 3 News:news rss Sustainability News and Blogs Update 29.08.2009

Online revision of AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard begins: The AccountAbility AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard (SES) is being revised and AccountAbility is seeking your input with the wiki-based feedback platform.

Green Consumers Worried About Economy – Poll: A very interesting poll with the main message that people will not care about the environment once this costs to much for them to afford. This is the reality unfortunately.

Annual cost of climate change ‘will be £190bn’: Shocking numbers on how much climate change related costs will damage our economies in the future if we do not get a move on and change something about it.

Top 3 Blog Posts:

51 Great Sites For Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability: A great compilation of interesting Sustainability / CSR websites and people on Twitter in this field.

Green Denial Amongst Smaller Businesses: Another very interesting blog post by David Connor. A must-read in my opinion.

How to READ a CSR report: This is Elaine Cohen’s version of how to read a Sustainability / CSR report. Very useful information

Picture Credit: lumaxart

Video: Time to Wake Up, Freak Out – then Get a Grip

August 27, 200911:23 am

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I just came across another great video on Climate Change. I know that I had several posts about Climate Change videos over past few months but this is different in the sense that it explains the whole problem in a very interesting way and in a constructive way outlines changes what we need to do in order to avoid the global temperature tipping point.

This is the video. I can not recommend it highly enough:

Wake Up, Freak Out HD cut from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

The director also has a website where you can find out more about the video and you will be able to have a look at the whole script of the video as well for you to share with others if they need some convincing.
http://wakeupfreakout.org/

Poll Results: CSR Reporting should be mandatory but to what extent?

August 25, 20096:31 pm

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I am conducting a poll every two weeks at the moment and last week I asked on Twitter what question my followers would like to have a poll on. Elaine Cohen had a really good question. She was curious what people where thinking about whether CSR Reporting should become mandatory for companies or not.

I really liked the idea and went straight ahead and used it as my poll question of the week.

Here are the results of the poll:

poll results reporting1 Poll Results: CSR Reporting should be mandatory but to what extent?

This is the direct link to the poll: http://twtpoll.com/na3igg

So what is the message from this poll?

The indisputable message here is that CSR reporting should be mandatory for companies.

84% are saying this. But the most interesting aspect is that there is a split between people demanding reporting for all organizations (44%) and people only demanding this for large and middle sized companies (40%).

I am interpreting this result in this way that reporting should be mandatory but a differentiation between small companies and large/medium sized companies is needed.

But what should this differentiation be? Maybe that small companies should either not have to report or have the choice to report? Or is there another differentiation you can think of?

New Commenting Feature now live on SustainabilityForum.com

August 23, 20096:30 pm

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As some of you may know am I also managing the website SustainabilityForum.com. The purpose of the website is to be a resource for interesting Sustainability news, blogs, events and discussions. And the new version of the SustainabilityForum.com has now been online for 2 months and the next tasks now is to ad several new features and parts that make the site one step at a time.

This week we added a new commenting system based on Disqus.com. Disqus, pronounced “discuss”, is a service and tool for web comments and discussions. The Disqus comment system can be plugged into any website, blog, or application. Disqus makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.

Now everyone using these three sites:

1)    Facebook
2)    Open ID and
3)    Twitter

will also be able to leave comments without having to register with us. This new commenting system makes it very easy to leave comments and looks good at the same time.

Her is a screenshot of how the new commenting field looks like.

disqus New Commenting Feature now live on SustainabilityForum.com

Your comments are extremely important to me and that is why I hope this new feature will encourage more comments using Twitter and Facebook, as a member of the SustainabilityForum.com or as a guest.

Poll: Should CSR reporting become mandatory for all public companies?

August 19, 20091:29 pm

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I am conducting another poll this week as part of my series of interesting questions on the current Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues.
The poll question this week is:

poll csrreporting Poll: Should CSR reporting become mandatory for all public companies?

This is the link to the poll: http://twtpoll.com/na3igg

There is no registration necessary just visit the poll, let us know what you think and what your opinion is. The current voting results will be shown instantly. We currently already have 40 votes and the result looks to be interesting indeed.

I will write about the results next week here if you are interested in the results once the poll closes on Saturday morning.

My Sustainability Communication Triangle

August 17, 20093:29 pm

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This post is intended to provide you with some background on how I work in my business. In my business I am focusing on three communication places to build my business network, stay in touch with friends and to gather and share information. This is what I call my Sustainability Communication Triangle.

My Sustainability Communication Triangle

business triangle My Sustainability Communication Triangle

Twitter
My Twitter user account (twitter.com/FabianPattberg) is important to me because it is a very simple but effective tool to share and gather interesting information on sustainability topics. It will also enable you or your organization to connect to a large audience of likeminded people from across the globe interested in sustainability topics. This is the key tool for information for me at the moment.

FabianPattberg.com
This is my blog (Where you are currently reading this post). I use this blog to share my thoughts, expertise and some interesting news and information on Sustainability topics. It is important to me that my posts are helpful and interesting to read. Another purpose of the website is to provide interesting resources on Sustainability / CSR topics and for everyone to have a first impression of who I am, what I am doing and how I work.

SustainabilityForum.com
The SustainabilityForum.com is the place where the current 3500+ members are sharing information on a wide range of sustainability topics. We have a place for discussion, Sustainability news, blogs and the events. I am personally using this website to build a global community and information resource for Sustainability professionals and all people interested in Sustainability. This is the website I started out with and I will continue to expand the range of information presented on the website.

All three Websites Serve a Clear Purpose
It is also important to state that all three places are equally important to me. All serve a specific and clear purpose that in the end reinforce each other so that I can be sure to know what is happening in the Sustainability world and that I am providing the relevant and important information for all that are interested in Sustainability.

Getting to your sustainability business triangle
So how do you get to your business triangle? This is a crucial aspect to your productivity on the net and it very much depends where your individual focus in the sustainability field lies. I am using this triangle approach but you will be focusing on different ways of connecting to people, your business and anyone else really.

For you it might be just one network or as many as ten networks. It all depends on how you are able to be present in these networks to participate and make a contribution.

Just ask yourself this simple question: “What networks are important to me?” The answer should come very natural to you. Then you will know what you need to focus on and where to put your effort into 100%.

So let me know whether you have a „business triangle“ as well or whether this is something new to you? All feedback is as always very welcome.

Sustainability News, Blogs and Jobs Update – 10.08.2009

August 10, 20093:37 pm

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news rss Sustainability News, Blogs and Jobs Update 10.08.2009Today’s post is a combination post on the two most interesting Sustainability news and blog posts as well as some jobs I came across last week. Hopefully you will find these links useful (Most of them are on SustainabilityForum.com as well.)

News

Blogs

Jobs

Picture Credit: lumaxart

CSR still has a lot to prove – Results of my recent online poll

August 3, 20091:23 pm

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Is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) a management fashion or just a temporary movement in the business world that no one really believes in? – This is what I asked myself last week and decided to do an online poll about it to find out what the view of other people on this is.
I decided to have the poll run for a week to get enough participants for a meaningful result. And I was pleased to see lots of people participate. In the end we had 141 votes and a lot of comments.

Here are the numbers:

poll csr fad CSR still has a lot to prove – Results of my recent online poll

The majority of participants believe that CSR is not a management fad but something more then that (53% and 75 people). But I guess it is even more significant to note that 40% or 56 people believe that CSR is just a management fad and nothing more.

Here are the comments to give you more context of the reactions:

csr poll 1 2 CSR still has a lot to prove – Results of my recent online poll

csr poll 2 1 CSR still has a lot to prove – Results of my recent online poll

csr poll 3 1 CSR still has a lot to prove – Results of my recent online poll

This is the direct link to the poll and the comments if you would to see the results and comments combined:
http://twtpoll.com/acq1ev

So what are the results telling us and what am I taking away as learning from this poll?
The results in my opinion show a very high degree of uncertainty and skepticism on whether CSR is something other then a management fad. This is even more remarkable as it is fair to say that the audience I engaged in this poll knows what CSR is (some even are CSR Managers in different organizations) and are as a consequence more likely to believe that it is not a management fashion.

My Learning
The majority of people participating in the poll do not think that CSR is a management fashion, however I was surprised by the number of people who are still skeptical towards the concept of CSR, even though the audience participating in this poll are most likely to be people involved in CSR in some way or another. I guess it is fair to say that even the CSR community is still unsure as to whether CSR is viewed as an intrinsic part of doing business by those who claim to be responsible.

I think the way I interpret these results is that we still might be a long way from and making it a way of doing business rather than a PR stunt, however we are on the right path and more and more people see the value CSR can bring to an organization’s long-term sustainability.

Do you agree with this assessment? Or do you think there is another interpretation of these poll results?