Fabian Pattberg

Tag Archives - corporate responsibility

First impressions – CSR in the Middle East

May 18, 20102:52 pm

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Several weeks ago I was invited to come to the Lebanon and speak about CSR reporting. I wasn’t sure what to make of it a the beginning but after a few minutes into the conversation I realized that this man I was speaking to really knew what he was talking about. It all sounded really interesting, something that was absolutely necessary to support in my opinion and another great opportunity to promote CSR. I therefore confirmed my interest and I was on a plane to Beirut yesterday.

beirut First impressions CSR in the Middle East We had the first ever CSR Seminar here in Beirut today. I think it was a success and I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the topics discussed, the regional input and the totally different culture.

More will follow in a proper post at a later stage but as I am a blogger I needed to share my immediate thoughts today and need some feedback if possible.

Here are my impressions from today:
  • The audience was very receptive to the overall concept of CSR
  • They even had several TV crews at the event. So you might even get the joy on seeing me on TV if you live the Middle East that is.
  • Culturally I believe is CSR is a really good fit for businesses here in he Middle East. The sense of community and responsibility is really strong.
  • Western best practice is really helping to frame the objective of what is needed for businesses to see their CSR objective
  • People with CSR experience in this field are really in high demand.
  • Lebanese people in particular are so hospitable. Just amazing how kind they are.

As I have written at the beginning, I will do a proper post later this or next week so stay tuned for more. In the meantime would I love to hear from you what your experiences with CSR and the Middle East are. No worries if you have none but maybe you could help me in sharing  what you would expect to find in terms of CSR best practice, cultural sensitivity in relation to CSR, etc?

A big challenge: Being a Sustainability / CSR professional at Shell

January 27, 20105:21 pm

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Imagine you are working for Shell in the Sustainability / CSR department and you really want to make a difference by showing that Shell is a responsible company. Todays post is about the challenges someone working at Shell might face. This is all from the viewpoint of a normal Shell stakeholder such as myself. I have also included a video response with some additional aspects to consider.

The Sustainability / CSR professional working at Shell as far as we can tell is facing the following situation at the moment:

Worsening reputation: Shells reputation with regards to Sustainability / CSR is not good. After being seen as leaders some years ago they are now being perceived as just putting a lot of money in their communication

shell logo A big challenge: Being a Sustainability / CSR professional at ShellLack of Sustainability / CSR innovation: Over the last few years Shell have not really convinced on the content and implementation side through innovation at all. This might be the consequence of not being leaders anymore combined with a lack of aspiration for bringing their reporting and best practice onto the next level. But where has this enthusiasm for innovation gone?

Perceived indifferent corporate culture: From what we can see outside as a stakeholder is that the corporate context and culture itself at Shell does not fully go hand in hand with their Sustainability / CSR messaging. I have no prove of that obviously but from we can interpret from press releases, other communications and article about Shell this seems to be the case. Here are three examples which just show how conflicting Shells messaging is at the moment:

So what should or can this employee do to change things for the better?

I believe that these following points are some aspects the Sustainability / CSR professionals at Shell need to consider to kick start their Sustainability / CSR innovation process again:

  • Stop shouting so loud about what you do. More PR does not mean that you are being perceived better in the long run. Less is more for Shell at the moment in my opinion.
  • Only communicate when you have something to say. This might be an obvious point but there is nothing more damaging when you have message and this message is being perceived as green-washing.
  • Spend at least 80% of your time now lobbying the senior management to increase the importance of your department and for you to get more leverage for future policy influencing.

I have also prepared a short video response on what I think Shell could do better:

Shell has been one of the innovators in the Sustainability / CSR field in the past and they can be again. Others like Centrica, Timberland and Intel have taken that position now. What happened to the Shell we saw several years ago?

As always please let me know what you think and whether you agree or disagree.

Takeover of Cadbury by Kraft: The sector loses one of its leaders

January 19, 201012:56 pm

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Today it was announced that Kraft will take over Cadbury. Here are some of the links to the the story:

What this means for the Sustainability / CSR sector?
This is not good news for Sustainability/CSR as we will lose one of the most forward thinking companies in this field and brands like Green and Black’s http://www.cadbury.com/ourbrands/featurebrands/Pages/GreenandBlacks2.aspx and others that shine through their responsible business practice will be swallowed by a global giant that only has not really shown itself as an equally responsible business.

This is my video response to the news today:

I will start recording video responses to interesting breaking news as well as events from now on. Please let me know what you think about this format and obviously about your view of the Cadbury takeover by Kraft.

Using LinkedIn Answers to promote Sustainability

October 22, 20097:46 pm

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Todays post is a resource post about LinkedIn Answers and the potential to promote Sustainability.

I have only just started to use LinkedIn Answers but I think the potential for sharing knowledge by being a platform for asking questions on Sustainability and getting answers to them from professionals is really enormous.

So what is LinkedIn Answers about?

The biggest benefit from LinkedIn Answers really is that you can get fast, accurate answers from your network and other experts worldwide and that you are able to showcase your knowledge, expertise, and interests by answering questions.

This is the look and feel of the interface:

l answers1 Using LinkedIn Answers to promote Sustainability

This sharing of knowledge by question and answer is especially important in the context of Sustainability. Sharing the knowhow and information individuals have is essential to pool the best practice and innovation for our fight to save the planet and our way of living. Sounds important I know but we need to everything no matter how small it may seem to make an impact.

Next to connecting with likeminded people to share information and knowledge, the LinkedIn Answers platform can also serve as place for where we can answer Sustainability critics (if they will ask a question of course) that are doubting the usefulness of Sustainability. LinkedIn Answers is not the place for a full online discussion obviously but this might be a good information source for practitioners to point colleagues/critics to if they have a question about certain Sustainability topics.

You need to have registered with LinkedIn in order to answer questions but I believe everyone in the Sustainability business sector should have a a LinkedIn account and profile in any case.

All the links you will need:

This is the main LinkedIn Answers website: LinkedIn Answers Main Page

LinkedIn Answers Sustainability: Sustainability

This is the link to the tutorial if you want to get started on LinkedIn Answers: Tuturial

One last note
Just to be clear on this. I am by no means affiliated with LinkedIn and I am not doing any business with them. For me it is important to share this information for the benefit of all and to promote Sustainability.

Responsible Business Practice Terminology: The Normal Chaos or Total Confusion?

September 24, 20093:00 pm

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Last week I started a poll on the question what you thought would be the best term for responsible business practice.

In total we had 117 votes with a result which was surprising to see in my opinion.

The most popular term with a total of 25 votes was Corporate Responsibility (CR) (21%) followed by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (21 votes, 18%), then Corporate Sustainability (19 votes, 16%), Corporate Citizenship (18 votes, 15%) and Sustainability with 14 votes and 12%.

Here are the results in a pie chart format:

Poll result term csr2 Responsible Business Practice Terminology: The Normal Chaos or Total Confusion?

So what can we take away from this result?

One point is crystal clear in my opinion. Responsible business practice is still being associated with too many different terms.

I think there are two different interpretations of this result:

Good development: This is good as it shows that different people and cultures have different terms to express responsible business practice. And different terms do not mean different things for these people just that companies need to be more responsible.

Confusion: This is not a good development as the usage of so many different terms just confuses everyone. This result is a sign of this.
In order to limit this confusion one or at most two terms should be the preferred terms to be associated with responsible business practice.

I personally only use the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability but this seems to vary most individuals and therefore believe that the second interpretation is more fitting.

Maybe this is a good thing as well? I am not so sure.

What do you think about these results? How do interpret them?

Top 5 News and Blogs This Week – 13.09.09

September 13, 20092:48 pm

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blogs Top 5 News and Blogs This Week 13.09.09The last few weeks have been really busy so I would like to apologize for not posting that often. This will change. icon smile Top 5 News and Blogs This Week 13.09.09

Here are the 5 most interesting Sustainability and CSR news stories and blogs I have come across this past week.

Picture Credit: Annie Mole

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?

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.

Poll: CSR just a Management Fashion?

July 27, 200910:45 am

6 Comments

I will now start weekly polls on some Sustainability and CSR topics. I always wanted to do to polls on a more regular basis and then blog about it. So I thought, why not start this week? So I did.

This week’s poll will be on the following question:

The poll is closing on Saturday and I will write a blog entry about the result the following week.

Please participate (no registration required) and feel free to make suggestions for some future polls.

THIS POLL IS NOW CLOSED. Please visit this post to see the results: http://www.fabianpattberg.com/2009/08/csr-still-has-a-lot-to-prove-%E2%80%93-results-of-my-recent-online-poll/