CSR corp social responsib

see ESG,also target by same ppl orgs? 10 22

The anti-ESG movement is the climate denial movement

Before the anti-ESG movement was the anti-ESG movement, it was the anti-CSR movement, the acronym standing for Corporate Social Responsibility. The two leaders of the anti-CSR movement were Steve Milloy and Tom Borelli.

Milloy is a former coal company executive and paid advocate for Phillip Morris and ExxonMobil. His career focus is developing communication strategies to deny or downplay the risks of tobacco and fossil fuel pollution. He is among the most prominent people “clouding the climate change debate,” according to theThe Washington Post.

Borelli is “one of the best-known of the science corrupters who worked for the tobacco industry,” according to The Center for Media and Democracy. In the 90s, while working for Phillip Morris, he led the tobacco industry’s efforts to team up with other polluting industries—like coal and chemicals—to promote anti-science rhetoric. “The climate denial movement is a direct result of these coalitions,” according to CMD. (He now promotes climate denial).

In 2004, Milloy and Borelli formed a non-profit called the Free Enterprise Education Institute. The non-profit’s purpose, according to its tax forms, was to “educate the public about the American system of free enterprise” by “maintaining a website about its research.”

The website they launched was called CSRwatch.com, and was marketed as a news destination for anyone opposed to “corporate social responsibility.” CSRwatch primarily aggregated news articles attacking corporations that had climate change and other socially conscious policies, like refusing to invest in child labor.

A February 16, 2006 screenshot of CSRwatch.com. Source: Wayback Machine.

One article posted to CSRwatch in 2006, for example, slammed corporations that refuse to invest in overseas sweatshops, saying they deprive children in developing countries of good paying jobs. "They try to shut down so-called sweatshops as though no jobs [are] better than what they consider to be low quality jobs, as though working as a 12-year-old beggar, thief or prostitute is better than working in a garment or shoe factory,” it read.

The article also slammed pro-indigenous corporate policies."I would love to meet just one corporate social responsibility activist … who's willing to go native for even one month and live in a state-of-the-art mud hut in malaria-infested rural Africa under the indigenous conditions they extol and perpetuate,"it read.

CSRWatch was directly funded by the fossil fuel industry. From 2004 to 2005, ExxonMobil gave the Free Enterprise Education Institute $80,000. The non-profit also received grants from a Koch family charity foundation, DonorsTrust, and The Randolph Foundation, all conservative groups with ties to fossil fuels.

The original anti-ESG investing movement was not so great at investing

CSRWatch was not Borelli and Milloy’s only effort to push back against ESG investing in the mid-2000s. They also set up a mutual fund called the The Free Enterprise Action Fund, designed to show that being anti-woke was also good business.

The fund sought to achieve long-term investment returns “while aggressively challenging CEOs who use shareholder assets to advance the liberal political agenda.”But, perhaps because neither Borelli nor Milloy had any experience managing money professionally, the fund didn’t do very well, according to a 2006 Slate piece:

Judging by the early returns, these free-marketers are failing the test of the marketplace. The fund has attracted a paltry $5.2 million in assets as of March 31. Returns have lagged the S&P 500 badly. In its first 10 months in business, the fund returned 2.32 percent while the S&P 500 rose 4.72 percent.

Of course, the fund’s poor performance could also simply have been explained by the fact that it’s bad business to ignore environmental and social risk factors.Indeed, this is why the bulk of the financial and corporate worlds don’t agree with the anti-ESG movement. They know that ESG investing, particularly investing with climate change risk in mind, is not ideological. It’s merely the smartest long-term financial decision.

The anti-ESG movement doesn’t agree with this assessment for one reason, and one reason only: They’re climate deniers. And the fact that they’re climate deniers is not a coincidence. That is what the fossil fuel industry intended.

The new anti-ESG movement: same folks, different face

The original anti-ESG movement eventually appeared to fizzle. CSRwatch.com stopped being updated in late 2007 and the domain expired in 2008. Shortly after, The Free Enterprise Action Fund was merged into a separate mutual fund that had nothing to do with anti-ESG advocacy.

The Free Enterprise Education Institute :{was then acquired by the :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{National Center for Public Policy Research:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}:, a much larger right-wing think tank funded by some of the similar players, including ExxonMobil. The NCPPR announced that Milloy and Borelli would remain at the head of the project, which would from then on be called the Free Enterprise Project.

At the time, Borelli said the merger would “significantly enhance our ability to educate the public on emerging threats to our free enterprise system.” And though it took about 14 years, it appears Borelli was correct.

The new anti-ESG financial firm backed by Peter Thiel and Bill Ackman, Strive Asset Management, is being led by Justin Danhof, the former executive Vice President of the NCPPR. In a recent interview with the Capitol Account newsletter,Danhof explained his qualifications: “I ran a program called the Free Enterprise Project,” he said. “We were really at the beginning of what you would call any sort of pushback against ESG, woke capital — before it was even a term.”

It may be more sophisticated today, but the anti-ESG movement is the same as it ever was: a political effort to delay climate action led by fossil fuel industry propagandists. It follows the classic playbook of climate disinformationby trying to “both sides” the idea of climate risk. But Witold Henisz, the director of the Wharton School’s ESG program, put it best: “Climate risk is investment risk. There is no credible other side, only an ideological opposition cynically seeking a wedge issue for upcoming political campaigns.”

“Proponents of climate science and more sustainable investing need to plan and execute their counterattack,” he added. “Silence in the face of such an attack is complicity. Which side are you on?”

Investors, consumers and workers are changing capitalism for the better by demanding companies behave more responsibly

Elizabeth Schmidt, University of Massachusetts Amherst

A new kind of capitalism is emerging in which companies value communities, the environment and workers just as much as profits. Even the Business Roundtable agrees.

819 art'l yesterday ceo ~ profit max, vs ceo$ max, //?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/financial-journalist-explains-why-shareholder-democracy-and-milton-friedman-economics-have-failed-miserably/

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/investors-consumers-and-workers-are-changing-capitalism-for-the-better-by-demanding-companies-behave-more-responsibly/

no lnx

Investors, consumers and workers are changing capitalism for the better by demanding companies behave more responsibly

Written by The Conversation July 27, 2019

Capitalism’s days may be numbered – at least judging by recent polls.

A majority of millennials reject the economic system, while 55% of women aged 18 to 54 say they prefer socialism. More Democrats now have a positive view of socialism than capitalism.

One problem interpreting numbers like these is that there are many definitions of capitalism and socialism. More to the point, people seem to be thinking of a specific form of capitalism that deems the sole purpose of companies is to increase stock prices and enrich investors. Known as shareholder capitalism, it’s been the guiding light of American business for more than four decades.

As a scholar of socially responsible companies, however, I cannot help but notice a shift in corporate behavior in recent years. A new kind of capitalism seems to be emerging, one in which companies value communities, the environment and workers just as much as profits.

The purpose of business

Nearly 50 years ago, the economist Milton Friedman proclaimed that the sole purpose of a business is “to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.”

Within a decade, Friedman’s claim became accepted wisdom in corporate boardrooms. The era of “shareholder primacy capitalism” had begun.

One result has been remarkable growth in the stock market. But critics argue companies and the “shareholder value theory” are also complicit in exacerbating many economic, social and environmental problems, such as income inequality and climate change.

Milton Friedman won prizes for his research on consumption analysis and monetary history.

They also note that putting profits first actually harms shareholders in the long run by encouraging managers to take actions that may eventually reduce earnings.

The rebellion

Many consumers, workers and socially conscious investors have also noticed these shortcomings and increased pressure on corporations to change.

For starters, more Americans no longer find it acceptable for companies to exclusively seek profits. A 2017 poll found that 78% of U.S. consumers want businesses to pursue social justice issues, while 76% said they would refuse to buy a product if the business supported an issue contrary to their beliefs. Almost half the respondents said they had already boycotted a product for that reason.

Workers increasingly expect their employers to share their values. A 2016 study found that most Americans – particularly millennials – consider a company’s social and environmental commitments when deciding where to work. Most would also be willing to take a pay cut in order to work for a “responsible” company – and are demanding their current employers behave that way.

For example, workers at online furniture company Wayfair recently walked out when they learned it had sent beds to detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 8,100 Amazon employees signed an open letter supporting a shareholder resolution urging the retailer to do more to address climate change.

Finally, investors are becoming more socially aware and putting more of their money behind businesses that behave in sustainable and responsive ways. At the beginning of 2018, portfolio managers held US$11.6 trillion in U.S. assets using environmental, social and governance criteria to guide their investments, up from $2.5 trillion in 2010.

Laurence Fink, founder and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, summed up the growing sentiment when he said, “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”

The corporate response

Presumably realizing how important these constituencies are to their bottom lines, businesses are paying attention.

Dick’s Sporting Goods, Kroger, Walmart and L.L. Bean, for example, responded to growing concerns over mass shootings by restricting the sale of guns. Proctor and Gamble, a major sponsor for U.S. Soccer, expressed support for the quest of the women’s team for equal pay and donated $500,000 to help narrow the pay gap with men.

Airlines including American, United and Frontier refused to knowingly fly children separated from their parents at the border following outrage over the Trump administration’s policy. And even though Amazon shareholders rejected the worker-supported shareholder resolution described above, Amazon set stronger goals for reducing its carbon footprint after the resolution was introduced.

Unilever found that its ‘sustainable living’ brands such as Ben & Jerry’s are growing faster than its other products.

These actions have sometimes hurt the bottom line. The decision to restrict gun sales cost Dick’s Sporting Goods $150 million. Delta lost a $50 million tax break in Georgia after severing ties with the NRA.

But these and other companies didn’t back down. The CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods explained that when something is “to the detriment of the public, you have to stand up.”

Companies are also setting tougher social and environmental goals for themselves and then reporting their successes and failures. Tesla, Unilever, Nike and Whole Foods are among nine companies with annual revenues of at least $1 billion that “have sustainability or social good at their core.”

In 2018, 86% of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies reported on their environmental, social and governance performance and achievements, up from less than 20% in 2011.

And companies have found that putting more emphasis on social justice can pay off. Unilever, for example, said in 2017 that its “sustainable living” brands, such as Ben & Jerry’s, Dove and Hellmann’s, are growing much faster than its other brands. Companies with the best scores on their sustainability reports generally perform better financially than those with lower scores.

The end of shareholder capitalism?

Skeptics can be forgiven for believing these corporate “changes” are not real or are simply public relations stunts designed to appeal to a new generation.

Businesses can, of course, say they will be responsible citizens while doing the opposite. Few sustainability reports in the United States are externally audited, and the companies are asking us to take them at their word.

Even if they are well-meaning, intentions are not enough to create systemic change. A 2017 study showed that many companies with climate change goals actually scaled back their ambitions over time as the reality clashed with their lofty goals.

But businesses can’t afford to ignore their customers’ wishes. Nor can they ignore their workers in a tight labor market. And if they disregard socially responsible investors, they risk both losing out on important investments and facing shareholder resolutions that force change.

The shareholder value doctrine is not dead, but we are beginning to see major cracks in its armor. And as long as investors, customers and employees continue to push for more responsible behavior, you should expect to see those cracks grow.The Conversation

Elizabeth Schmidt, Professor of Practice, Nonprofit Organizations; Social & Environmental Enterprises, University of Massachusetts Amherst

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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FoxNews.com op-ed attacking former Attorney General Eric Holder uncritically relied on, and linked to, a piece by white supremacist Jared Taylor that accused Democrats of subjecting “whites to outright racial plunder.” Fox News changed the link after Media Matters contacted the network.

Jeremy Carl, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, wrote a May 23 FoxNews.com op-ed complaining about a Starbucks policy allowing “anyone to spend time in its stores and use restrooms regardless of whether they make a purchase.” He also criticized the company for having engaged "Eric Holder as an adviser on diversity issues,” claiming he “has a long history of making accusations of racial discrimination, often unjustified.”

As one piece of evidence against Holder, Carl linked to a January 2015 opinion piece by Jared Taylor on the white supremacist website American Renaissance. Media Matters found the May op-ed while examining media outlets that have uncritically promoted or cited research by white supremacist media.

The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that American Renaissance “has been one of the vilest white nationalist publications, often promoting eugenics and blatant anti-black and anti-Latino racists. In 2005 for example, after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Taylor wrote, ‘When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western Civilization—any kind of civilization—disappears.’” The Anti-Defamation League wrote that Taylor “upholds racial homogeneity as the key to fostering peaceful coexistence.”

Taylor’s piece was a review of conservative commentators John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky’s book Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department. The review began by attacking Holder as “a devious, power-hungry, racial zealot” who is “probably the most racially committed black ever to hold a cabinet job” and concluded that while the Republican and Democratic parties are similar, Republicans “are less likely to subject whites to outright racial plunder.”

[scrensht]

Media Matters contacted Fox News about the op-ed and asked if the network thought the research citation was appropriate. The company did not reply but changed the link so it now directs to the Amazon page for Obama’s Enforcer. The site has not noted the change or posted an editor’s note (the op-ed’s timestamp reflects the update).

Media Matterslater contacted Carl, who stated: “Obviously I would not have intentionally cited American Renaissance in any article I wrote — I wrote this article on a very fast same-day deadline at Fox News’ request and simply missed the sourcing. I suspect I missed it because the article was discussing work by Hans Von Spakovsky from Heritage, whom I do know and whose work I trust. I likely simply erred in assuming it was by Von Spakovsky.”

Carl, who agreed with Fox's decision to change the citation, also claimed “Holder has a history of numerous racist statements and actions is beyond doubt. I don’t apologize for saying that — then or now. One doesn’t need to link to American Renaissance to make that point, and obviously I would not have intentionally done so.” He additionally suggested that because Media Matters chose to contact Fox directly first rather than the author, it was evidence we are engaging in the “harassment of a critic of leftism" instead of a "pursuit of truth.”

protest 3/18 LA BB brigade protest b/c taking CSR award after promise to stop etp $ DN 3/13

you can tell how effective tactic is by how scared corps over-react:

https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-greenpeace-dapl-2476132561.html

Trump Attorney Sues Greenpeace Over Dakota Access Pipeline in $300 Million Racketeering Case

By Steve Horn

Energy Transfer Partners, owner of the Dakota Access pipeline, has filed a $300 million Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) lawsuit against Greenpeace and other environmental groups for their activism against the long-contested North Dakota-to-Illinois project.

In its 187-page complaint, Energy Transfer alleges that "putative not-for-profits and rogue eco-terrorist groups who employ patterns of criminal activity and campaigns of misinformation to target legitimate companies and industries with fabricated environmental claims and other purported misconduct" caused the company to lose

billions of dollars."

In the case, Energy Transfer is represented by lawyers from the firm Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, one of the namesakes of which is Marc Kasowitz. Kasowitz is a member of the legal team representing President Donald Trump in the ongoing congressional and special counsel investigation of his 2016 presidential campaign's alleged ties and potential collusion with Russian state actors. The press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit details that Kasowitz attorney Michael J. Bowe is leading what the firm describes as an ongoing probe into the environmental groups' "campaign and practices."

Trump Connections

Bowe, according to multiple press accounts, is serving as Kasowitz's deputy in the ongoing Russia investigation. He also represents Resolute Forest Products and co-plaintiffs in its ongoing RICO lawsuit against Greenpeace, Stand.earthand other defendantsinvolved in a corporate social responsibilitycampaign revolving around Resolute's forest-originated products.

Bowe, furthermore, is an attorney-of-record in a $50 million defamation lawsuit filed against freelance journalist Yashar Ali by suspended Fox News anchor Eric Bolling. Ali published a freelance article commissioned by the HuffPost on August 4 in which multiple sources told Ali that Bolling had sent a litany of unsolicited lewd text messages to Fox News' female employees.

Another attorney of record for the latest Greenpeace lawsuit, Jennifer Recine, formerly represented Trump"against the owners of one of the last large scale real estate development sites in Manhattan" and helped him win "the largest ever attachment in New York City history," according to her biographical sketch on the Kasowitz Benson Torres website. Bowe also lists that detail on his Kasowitz biography.

According to a New York Times article published in June, Marc Kasowitz represented Trump during the Trump Organization's financial travails in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and has served as his attorney in other recent matters. He even considered setting up an office in the White House, though he serves as Trump's personal attorney and not White House legal counsel.

"Kasowitz has been central to Mr. Trump's recent legal battles, helping his client keep divorce records sealed and representing him in the Trump University fraud lawsuit, in which Mr. Trump ultimately agreed to pay $25 million to settle claims from former students that the institution had cheated them out of tuition money," reported The Times. "In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Mr. Kasowitz threatened to sue The New York Times for libel on Mr. Trump's behalf over a story in which two women accused Mr. Trump of inappropriate touching years earlier."

Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren was a major campaign donor to President Trump, giving him more than $100,000 in campaign contributions.

'Meritless Lawsuit'

In its press release, the legal team for Energy Transfer Partners says that a website "will be established to catalog information and publish progress reports on the case and, when necessary, to set the record straight as the facts warrant."

A similar website has been set up in the Resolute Forest Products case. In a press release, Energy Transfer Partners accuses Greenpeace and other groups of "inducing and directing violent and destructive attacks."

"The alleged Enterprise is comprised of rogue environmental groups and militant individuals who employ a pattern of criminal activity and a campaign of misinformation for purposes of increasing donations and advancing their political or business agendas," Energy Transfer Partners says in its press release about the lawsuit. "In addition to its misinformation campaign, the Enterprise directly and indirectly funded eco-terrorists on the ground in North Dakota. These groups formed their own outlaw camp among peaceful protestors (sic) gathered near Lake Oahe, and exploited the peaceful activities of these groups to further the Enterprise's corrupt agenda by inducing and directing violent and destructive attacks against law enforcement as well as Plaintiffs' property and personnel."

The "eco-terrorist" language mirrors that used by law enforcement and the public relations firms it and Energy Transfer Partners paid during the height of protests at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. In response to a request for comment from DeSmog, Bowe said that the alleged RICO conspiracy had a global reach.

"The complaint alleges the manufacturing and aggressive worldwide dissemination of a completely phony narrative inconsistent with overwhelming and incontrovertible facts," said Bowe. "We intend to successfully prosecute the case to its conclusion, vindicate this good company, and compensate it for the substantial harm it has suffered."

Greenpeace, though, sees the lawsuit as an act of "bullying" and in the category of "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation," or SLAPP.

"This is the second consecutive year Donald Trump's go-to attorneys at the Kasowitz law firm have filed a meritless lawsuit against Greenpeace," Greenpeace USA General Counsel Tom Wetterer said in a press statement. "They are apparently trying to market themselves as corporate mercenaries willing to abuse the legal system to silence legitimate advocacy work. This has now become a pattern of harassment by corporate bullies, with Trump's attorneys leading the way."

Reposted with permission from our media associate DeSmogBlog.

ref

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-28/how-a-canadian-timber-company-is-using-u-s-racketeering-law-to-go-after-greenpeace

Racketeering Law to Go After Greenpeace

And how Hustler Magazine may help the defense.

By Paul Barrett

July 28, 2017, 6:00 AM PDT

For several years, Greenpeace has been mounting a multimedia campaign against Canada's Resolute Forest Products, one of the largest timber-and-paper companies in the world. Called “Resolute: Forest Destroyer,” the campaign accuses the company of endangering the Boreal Forest, a vast evergreen swath that covers a third of northern Canada.

In response, Resolute has taken the extreme step of suing Greenpeace in the U.S. for violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The suit, filed last year and pending in federal court in San Francisco, home to Greenpeace’s forest campaigners, seeks to prove that theenvironmental group is akin to a mob syndicate.The company says it has suffered a $100 million hit to its reputation. Given that damages can be tripled under RICO, a decision in Resolute’s favor would endanger Greenpeace’s very existence.

The suit has strong support in communities tied to the forestry industry. “This is the first time a company has stood up to an outside group and said we won’t take this anymore,” says David Canfield, the mayor of Kenora, a town in northwestern Ontario.

Resolute isn’t the first corporation to try this strategy. Chevron recently used the racketeering act against environmental activists who had sued it over oil pollution in Ecuador. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court left in place a lower-court ruling that protected the company from having to pay damages in the U.S. related to the Ecuadorian mess. Chevron proved that its activist foes had transformed their suit against the company into an extortion plot featuring bribery, fabrication of evidence, and the ghostwriting of judicial opinions.

By comparison, Greenpeace’s alleged offenses seem less dire, but that isn’t to say its assertions have been airtight. For one thing, Resolute isn’t “destroying” the Boreal. According to the government agency Natural Resources Canada, less than 0.5 percent of the country’s forest acreage is harvested annually (and only a minority of that is taken by Resolute).

With the exception of logging roads, 100 percent of forest that’s harvested is regenerated naturally or by seeding or planting, the agency says. “‘Destroying’ means something: It's going away and not coming back,” Resolute’s lawyer, Michael Bowe, says. The Boreal, he adds, isn’t disappearing in that fashion.

“The idea that we’re the ones doing damage is patently false and malicious,” says Seth Kursman, Resolute’s spokesman. The company accuses Greenpeace of other distortions—misrepresenting trees felled by natural causes as having been illegally cut down; predicting that Resolute activities will lead to a caribou “death spiral,” when the animals at risk are in western Canada, far from Resolute’s operations in the east; and blaming the company for hastening climate change when, Resolute claims, the old-growth forest that loggers take down absorbs dramatically less carbon dioxide than young forest growth that results from seeding, planting, or natural regeneration.

In keeping with RICO, the suit holds that Greenpeace has run something like a protection racket by threatening the company’s corporate customers with boycotts if they don’t cut ties with Resolute over these issues. Resolute says it has lost $100 million in revenue because of such threats—the basis of its damages claim. The company also accuses Greenpeace of fraudulently inducing “many millions of dollars” in donations from “regular working-class people who have been duped” into believing their money prevents forest loss, climate change, and caribou suffering. When I question whether Resolute has standing to vindicate the rights of Greenpeace contributors, Bowe responds that donors were harmed by the racketeering “enterprise” and are therefore properly included as victims. While he acknowledges that his evidence may not have the earmarks of traditional organized crime, he hastens to add, “I don’t think you have to have a Chevron case to have a RICO case.”

Greenpeace General Counsel Tom Wetterer says that the group stands behind its past statements and actions. But in its legal papers, the organization claims it can win the case without having been error-free in its claims about Resolute. The defense argument begins with the idea that Resolute has dressed up a garden-variety defamation suit as a racketeering case.When viewed properly under U.S. defamation law, the defense says, Greenpeace’s attacks on the company—including boycott threats—constitute protected free speech. And when statements relate to issues of public concern, the First Amendment protects accusatory language employed “in a loose figurative sense.” That last point comes from the holding of a 1974 Supreme Court decision on labor organizing, which also said “rhetorical hyperbole” and “vigorous epithet” are protected. Activists, Greenpeace adds, aren’t obliged to “hew to strict literalisms or scientific precision.”

So, even if Resolute hasn’t literally “destroyed” the forest or pushed caribou into a “death spiral,” Greenpeace feels entitled to say that it did—and the U.S. judiciary may agree. “We’re doing legitimate advocacy work,” says Wetterer.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 11 other media organizations have filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Greenpeace. They point to a 1988 Supreme Court decision that protected Hustler’s right to publish a parody ad depicting the late conservative Christian evangelist Jerry Falwell as an incestuous drunk. “In the world of debate about public affairs,” the court’s unanimous ruling read, “many things done with motives that are less than admirable are protected by the First Amendment.”

A federal judge is expected to hear Greenpeace’s motion to dismiss the Resolute suit this fall. Unsettling though it may be to watch a litigant wrap its free-speech fate in a revolting porn magazine, I predict Greenpeace will have the better of the constitutional argument. The First Amendment offers activists a strong shield.

As a final observation, though, it’s worth noting that in a different context, Greenpeace has taken a narrower view of protected expression. On ExxonSecrets.org, a website it sponsors, the organization says that the oil company ’s past support for climate-change denial doesn’t deserve First Amendment insulation. There is a “responsibility that goes with freedom of speech, which is based around honesty and transparency,” Greenpeace asserts. “Freedom of speech does not apply to misinformation and propaganda.” Those lines sound an awful lot like something Resolute would say.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/**2013**/04/the-case-against-cronies-libertarians-must-stand-up-to-corporate-greed/275404/

The Republican attack on President Obama's economic policy has changed subtly, but significantly, in the last three years. In 2009, he was allegedly a "socialist" and a "Marxist" who lusted for government control of the entire economy. But lately, that has given way to more nuanced charges of "crony capitalism" -- of giving special, friendly treatment to certain companies and industries, or allowing powerful corporations to essentially write the laws, themselves.

Republicans shouted about Obama's green energy handouts and industry bailouts. Mitt Romney assailed him for picking winners and losers. "Free enterprise works," Romney said in early 2012. "Crony capitalism does not." The anti-cronies expanded their focus beyond the White House, voting out government officials seen as cozying up to businesses, like Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah and Rep. Bob Ingliss (a.k.a.: "Bailout Bob").

Voters despise government officials who get in bed with corporations. But what about corporations who cozy up to government? Are companies who use cronyism to grow their profit acting unethically?

The question makes some free-marketeers uneasy. After all, we not only tolerate the fierce pursuit of profit, but also we defend it against taxes and heavy-handed regulation. Milton Friedman famously said, "The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits."

But in the age of crony capitalism, libertarians must declare that some means of pursuing profit are immoral and call on executives to reject them. This would create a positive case for capitalism -- arguing that the pursuit of profit, in the context of fair and open competition, helps the whole society. The new corporate social responsibility, redefined for libertarians, must stand athwart crony corporatism yelling "stop."

How Cozy Are Big Business and Big Government?

...

Name and Shame

Tom Borelli spent much of last decade trying to steer companies away from big government. He co-founded the Free Enterprise Action Fund, a mutual fund that bought stocks in companies for the sake of filing shareholder motions. The fund has typically targeted corporate execs who embraced big government policies that would reduce profits, such as members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership supporting federal climate legislation that would raise taxes on energy companies.

But lately, Borelli has targeted companies who are cozying up to government to increase their profits -- such as Boeing designing export legislation that improves their lot and tax laws that squeeze out competition for H&R Block.

When the Obama administration issued new IRS rules in early 2010, analysts at UBS said the regulations would "help Block by ... add[ing] barriers to entry (or continuation) for small preparers, [and] provid[ing] revenue as Block may sell their continuing education and competency tests to others."

It is these arrangements -- in which the industry loses, but one company wins, or a few big companies win -- that free-marketeers should pay more attention to.

While Borelli's first trigger for a complaint was an executive selling out his shareholders, Borelli's second trigger is far loftier. It is, in his own words: "Is this ultimately good for the free market? Is this ultimately good for liberty?"

Borelli has given up the shareholder suits -- executives have too much power to quash them -- but he's still trying to pry corporations away from government. His new tactic: "Shaming." This can move businesses, because they care about their "billion-dollar brands being tarnished," Borelli argues.

Liberal groups try to impose a reputation cost on companies that don't protect the environment, hire enough women, or pay high enough wages. Conservatives can create a reputation cost for companies that embrace big government.

"I want to do business with a bank that acts on principle."

To some extent, Borelli argues, it's working: "If I go to a Tea Party rally, all I have to do is mention General Electric, and there are audible boos."

The Rickety Big-Government Bandwagon

Another way for free-marketeers to talk businessmen out of seeking profit (besides name and shame) might be to persuade them that getting into bed with Washington often ends messily.....

http://prospect.org/article/when-shareholder-capitalism-came-town

origin of bad behavior:

...

What shareholders possess is a contractual claim to the “residual value” of the corporation once all its other obligations have been satisfied—and even then the directors are given wide latitude to make whatever use of that residual value they choose, just as long as they’re not stealing it for themselves.

It is true, of course, that only shareholders have the power to elect the corporate directors. But given that directors are almost always nominated by the management and current board and run unopposed, it requires the peculiar imagination of corporate counsel to leap from the shareholders’ power to “elect” directors to a sweeping mandate that directors and the executives must put the interests of shareholders above all others.

Given this lack of legal or historical support, it is curious how “maximizing shareholder value” has evolved into such a widely accepted norm of corporate behavior.

Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago free-market economist, is often credited with first articulating the idea in a 1970 New York Times Magazine essay in which he argued that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” Anything else, he argues, is “unadulterated socialism.”

A decade later, Friedman’s was still a minority view among corporate leaders. In 1981, as Ralph Gomory and Richard Sylla recount in a recent article in Daedalus,the Business Roundtable, representing the nation’s largest firms, issued a statement recognizing a broader purpose of the corporation: “Corporations have a responsibility, first of all, to make available to the public quality goods and services at fair prices, thereby earning a profit that attracts investment to continue and enhance the enterprise, provide jobs and build the economy.” The statement went on to talk about a “symbiotic relationship” between business and society not unlike that voiced nearly 30 years earlier by General Motors chief executive Charlie Wilson, when he reportedly told a Senate committee that “what is good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.”

By 1997, however, the Business Roundtable was striking a tone that sounded a whole lot more like Professor Friedman than CEO Wilson. “The principal objective of a business enterprise is to generate economic returns to its owners,” it declared in its statement on corporate responsibility. “If the CEO and the directors are not focused on shareholder value, it may be less likely the corporation will realize that value.”

The most likely explanation for this transformation involves three broad structural changes that were going on in the U.S. economy—globalization, deregulation, and rapid technological change. Over a number of decades, these three forces have conspired to rob what were once the dominant American corporations of the competitive advantages they had during the “golden era” of the 1950s and 1960s in both U.S. and global markets. Those advantages—and the operating profits they generated—were so great that they could spread the benefits around to all corporate stakeholders. The postwar prosperity was so widely shared that it rarely occurred to stockholders, consumers, or communities to wonder if they were being shortchanged.[yanni farifakis kpfa 7/5/16 8 am]

It was only when competition from foreign suppliers or recently deregulated upstarts began to squeeze out those profits—often with the help of new technologies—that these once-mighty corporations were forced to make difficult choices. In the early going, their executives found that it was easier to disappoint shareholders than customers, workers, or even their communities. The result, during the 1970s, was a lost decade for investors.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, a number of companies with lagging stock prices found themselves targets for hostile takeovers launched by rival companies or corporate raiders employing newfangled “junk bonds” to finance unsolicited bids. Disappointed shareholders were only too willing to sell out to the raiders. So it developed that the mere threat of a hostile takeover was sufficient to force executives and directors across the corporate landscape to embrace a focus on profits and share prices. Almost overnight they tossed aside their more complacent and paternalistic management style, and with it a host of inhibitions against laying off workers, cutting wages and benefits, closing plants, spinning off divisions, taking on debt, moving production overseas. Some even joined in waging hostile takeovers themselves.

Spurred on by this new “market for corporate control,” companies traded in their old managerial capitalism for a new shareholder capitalism, which continues to dominate the business sector to this day. Those high-yield bonds, once labeled as “junk” and peddled by upstart and ethically challenged investment banks, are now a large and profitable part of the business of every Wall Street firm. The unsavory raiders have now morphed into respected private-equity and hedge-fund managers, some of whom proudly call themselves “activist investors.” And corporate executives who once arrogantly ignored the demands of Wall Street now profess they have no choice but to dance to its tune.

THE INSTITUTIONS SUPPORTING SHAREHOLDER VALUE

An elaborate institutional infrastructure has developed to reinforce shareholder capitalism and its generally accepted corporate mandate to maximize short-term profits and share price. This infrastructure includes free--market-oriented think tanks and university faculties that continue to spin out elaborate theories about the efficiency of financial markets....

With the rise of behavioral economics, and the onset of two stock-market bubbles, the efficient--market hypothesis has more recently come under serious criticism. Another of last year’s Nobel winners, Robert Shiller, demonstrated the various ways in which financial markets  are predictably irrational. Curiously, however, the efficient-market hypothesis is still widely accepted by business schools—and, in particular, their finance departments—which continue to preach the shareholder-first ideology.

Surveys by the Aspen Institute’s Center for Business Education, for example, find that  most MBA students believe that maximizing value for shareholders is the most important responsibility of a company and that this conviction strengthens as they proceed toward their degree, in many schools taking courses that teach techniques for manipulating short-term earnings and share prices. The assumption is so entrenched that even business-school deans who have publicly rejected the ideology acknowledge privately that they’ve given up trying to convince their faculties to take a more balanced approach.

Equally important in sustaining the shareholder focus are corporate lawyers, in-house as well as outside counsels, who now reflexively advise companies against actions that would predictably lower a company’s stock price.

For many years, much of the jurisprudence coming out of the Delaware courts—where most big corporations have their legal home—was based around the “business judgment” rule, which held that corporate directors have wide discretion in determining a firm’s goals and strategies, even if their decisions reduce profits or share prices. But in 1986, the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled that directors of the cosmetics company Revlon had to put the interests of shareholders first and accept the highest price offered for the company. As Lynn Stout has written, and the Delaware courts subsequently confirmed, the decision was a narrowly drawn exception to thebusiness-judgment rule that only applies once a company has decided to put itself up for sale.But it has been widely—and mistakenly—used ever since as a legal rationale for the primacy of shareholder interests and the legitimacy of share-price maximization.

Reinforcing this mistaken belief are the shareholder lawsuits now routinely filed against public companies by class-action lawyers any time the stock price takes a sudden dive. Most of these are frivolous and, particularly since passage of reform legislation in 1995, many are dismissed. But even those that are dismissed generate cost and hassle, while the few that go to trial risk exposing the company to significant embarrassment, damages, and legal fees.

exxon busted iCN AG

The day would only get worse for the multinational energy firm, as the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered a vote on a shareholder resolution that would require the firm to disclose how climate change—or regulations meant to combat it—would impact the stability of the company’s finances.

Govt securities watchdog orders ExxonMobil shareholder vote on #climate data https://t.co/KfS425w05d #ExxonKnew #divest

— climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1) March 24, 2016

The SEC’s move comes just weeks after an investigation by the Government Accountability Project, which revealed that, for years, Exxon had lied to the SEC in its 10-K filings.

“Exxon has done a masterful job of hedging its bets, both by omission and commission: omitting mere mention for many years, and then grossly understating, the vast array of direct and indirect risks it faces as a result of climate change,” said Climate Science & Policy Watch, a GAP program that promotes governmental integrity in the use of climate science. “Even worse, Exxon has overtly and flagrantly overstated possible financial and economic risks associated with regulating carbon and other GHGs, both here in the U.S. and in nations around the world."

http://www.alternet.org/environment/rockefeller-family-fund-divest-exxonmobil-says-oil-giant-morally-reprehensible

As part of its ongoing efforts to minimize its environmental footprint, Apple has issued $1.5 billion in bonds that will finance sustainable business projects. This is the largest ever “green bond” issued by a U.S. corporation.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/19/apple-green-bond/

Bonner Cohen, John Carlisle, Michael Fumento, Michael Gough, Henry Miller, Steven Milloy, Kenneth Smith and Elizabeth Whelan (eds), Fear Profiteers: Do ‘Socially Responsible’ Businesses Sow Health Scares to Reap Monetary Rewards?,, [[National Center for Public Policy[[ and Junkscience.com, undated but approx 2000, pages 82-83.

B corps eg kickstarter

history: http://www.desmog.uk/2015/04/16/how-exxonmobil-reacted-when-environmentalists-crashed-its-first-annual-meeting-18-years-ago

face so

5/15

Since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling allowed corporations and unions to inject unlimited money into elections, political spending by corporations has ballooned. But so has investor concern about such activity.

This spring, according to the Corporate Reform Coalition, a network of more than 75 organizations and individuals seeking "to promote corporate governance solutions to combat undisclosed money in elections," over 100 U.S. companies are facing shareholder resolutions asking them to disclose this information.

Members of the coalition said in a conference call held last month that the ultimate goal is for the Securities and Exchange Commission to rule that all publicly-traded companies must disclose their political spending. In addition, five state treasurers, including North Carolina's Janet Cowell (a Democrat), sent a letter on April 21 to the SEC calling for this requirement. But to date, SEC Chair Mary Jo White has been silent on the matter.

The shareholders and their allies say stepped-up disclosure is necessary because corporate political spending subjects investors to new risks. "Investors have a right to know what candidates or issues their investments are going to support or oppose," says Public Citizen's Susan Harley.

Resolutions addressing the political activity of corporations, including lobbying and election spending, make up over one-quarter of all the social and environmental proposals being brought up at shareholder meetings this spring, according to Proxy Preview, an annual report on shareholder resolutions by the As You Sow Foundation, the Sustainable Investment Institute and Proxy Impact. Major corporations including Bank of America and Duke Energy, both based in Charlotte, North Carolina, are among those being called upon by shareholders to disclose their political activities.

Duke Energy, the nation's biggest electric utility, was ranked as North Carolina's most politically powerful corporation in Facing South/Institute for Southern Studies' "Tar Heel Power Brokers" report, a study measuring political influence of North Carolina groups based on their lobbying and election spending. At its May 7 shareholder meeting in Charlotte, the company will face a resolution from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, which "seek[s] to make progress on two pressing and interconnected problems … inequality and climate change," to disclose its political spending....

wiki

A donor-advised fund is a charitable giving vehicle administered by a public charity and created for the purpose of managing charitable donations on behalf of an organization, family, or individual. A donor-advised fund offers the opportunity to create an easy-to-establish, low cost, flexible vehicle for charitable giving as an alternative to direct giving or creating a private foundation. Donors enjoy administrative convenience (the sponsoring organization does the paperwork after the initial donation), cost savings (a foundation requires around 2.5% to 4% of its assets each year to run), and tax advantages (versus individual giving) by conducting their grantmaking through the fund.^[1]

However, from some perspectives, a donor advised fund may have some disadvantages versus a private foundation. Namely, a private foundation can accept donation of unusual or illiquid assets (part ownership of a private company; art; real estate; partnerships or limited partnership shares) which a donor advised fund cannot. This can be a significant consideration in some cases. In addition, the founders/board of a private foundation have complete control over where its giving goes within broad legal bounds. In a donor advised fund, technically, the donor only advises the sponsoring organization where the money should go. While rather rare, a sponsoring organization could conceivably alter the donor's intent....

note risk

wiki

Corporate social responsibility (CSR, also called corporate conscience, corporate citizenship, social performance, or sustainable responsible business/ Responsible Business)^[1] is a form ofcorporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. CSR policy functions as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby a business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards, and international norms. In some models, a firm's implementation of CSR goes beyond compliance and engages in "actions that appear to further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm and that which is required by law."^[2][3] CSR is a process with the aim to embrace responsibility for the company's actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere who may also be considered stakeholders.

The term "corporate social responsibility" became popular in the 1960s and has remained a term used indiscriminately by many to cover legal and moral responsibility more narrowly construed.^[4]

Proponents argue that corporations make more long term profits by operating with a perspective, while critics argue that CSR distracts from the economic role of businesses.McWilliams and Siegel's article (2000) published in Strategic Management Journal, cited by over 1000 academics, compared existing econometric studies of the relationship between social and financial performance. They concluded that the contradictory results of previous studies reporting positive, negative, and neutral financial impact, were due to flawed empirical analysis. McWilliams and Siegel demonstrated that when the model is properly specified; that is, when you control for investment in Research and Development, an important determinant of financial performance, CSR has a neutral impact on financial outcomes.^[5]

In his widely cited book^[6][7] entitled Misguided Virtue: False Notions of Corporate Social Responsibility (2001) David Henderson argued forcefully against the way in which CSR broke from traditional corporate value-setting. He questioned the "lofty" and sometimes "unrealistic expectations" in CSR.^[8]

Some argue that CSR is merely window-dressing, or an attempt to pre-empt the role of governments as a watchdog over powerful multinational corporations. Political sociologists became interested in CSR in the context of theories of globalization, neo-liberalism, and late capitalism. Adopting a critical approach, sociologists emphasize CSR as a form of capitalist legitimacy and in particular point out that what has begun as a social movement against uninhibited corporate power has been co-opted by and transformed by corporations into a 'business model' and a 'risk management' device, often with questionable results ^[9]

CSR is titled to aid an organization's mission as well as a guide to what the company stands for and will uphold to its consumers. Development business ethics is one of the forms of applied ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. ISO 26000 is the recognized international standard for CSR. Public sector organizations (the United Nations for example) adhere to the triple bottom line (TBL). It is widely accepted that CSR adheres to similar principles but with no formal act of legislation.

The notion is now extended beyond purely commercial corporations, e.g. to universities.^[10]

[hide]

1 Approaches
- 1.1 Cost-benefit analysis with a resource-based view
- 1.2 Supply chain wide approaches

5 Criticisms and concerns

Criticisms and concerns

Critics of CSR as well as proponents debate a number of concerns related to it. These include CSR's relationship to the fundamental purpose and nature of business and questionable motives for engaging in CSR, including concerns about insincerity and hypocrisy.

Nature of business

Milton Friedman and others have argued that a corporation's purpose is to maximize returns to its shareholders, and that since only people can have social responsibilities, corporations are only responsible to their shareholders and not to society as a whole. Although they accept that corporations should obey the laws of the countries within which they work, they assert that corporations have no other obligation to society. Some people perceive CSR as incongruent with the very nature and purpose of business, and indeed a hindrance to free trade. Those who assert that CSR is contrasting with capitalism and are in favor of the free marketargue that improvements in health, longevity and/or infant mortality have been created by economic growth attributed to free enterprise.^[56]

Critics of this argument perceive the free market as opposed to the well-being of society and a hindrance to human freedom. They claim that the type of capitalism practiced in many developing countries is a form of economic and cultural imperialism, noting that these countries usually have fewer labour protections, and thus their citizens are at a higher risk of exploitation by multinational corporations.^[57] In 2013, an Internet based, smart-phone application, Buycott.com, was launched to inform consumers of corporate product affiliation just prior to the point of sale. Conscientious consumers can now subscribe to on-line databases that associate egregious corporate behavior with the brand's Universal Product Code. The consumer now has a mechanism to send market-signals to the owners and shareholders regarding CSR.^[58]

A wide variety of individuals and organizations operate in between these poles. For example, the REALeadership Alliance asserts that the business of leadership (be it corporate or otherwise) is to change the world for the better.^[59] Many religious and cultural traditions hold that the economy exists to serve human beings, so all economic entities have an obligation to society (see for example Economic Justice for All). Moreover, as discussed above, many CSR proponents point out that CSR can significantly improve long-term corporate profitability because it reduces risks and inefficiencies while offering a host of potential benefits such as enhanced brand reputation and employee engagement.

Motives

Another concern is that sometimes companies claim to promote CSR and be committed to }:sustainable development but simultaneously engage in harmful business practices. For example, since the 1970s, the McDonald's Corporation's association with Ronald McDonald House has been viewed as CSR and relationship marketing. More recently, as CSR has become mainstream, the company has beefed up its CSR programs related to its labor, environmental and other practices^[63] All the same, in McDonald's Restaurants v Morris & Steel, Lord Justices Pill, May and Keane ruled that it was fair comment to say that McDonald's employees worldwide 'do badly in terms of pay and conditions'^[64] and true that 'if one eats enough McDonald's food, one's diet may well become high in fat etc., with the very real risk of heart disease.'^[65]Some critics believe that CSR programs are undertaken by companies such as British American Tobacco (BAT),^[61] the petroleum giant BP (well known for its high-profile advertising campaigns on environmental aspects of its operations), and McDonald's (see below) to distract the public from ethical questions posed by their core operations. They argue that some corporations start CSR programs for the commercial benefit they enjoy through raising their reputation with the public or with government. They suggest that corporations which exist solely to maximize profits are unable to advance the interests of society as a whole.^[62]

Royal Dutch Shell has a much-publicized CSR policy and was a pioneer in triple bottom line reporting, but this did not prevent the 2004 scandal concerning its misreporting of oil reserves, which seriously damaged its reputation and led to charges of hypocrisy. Since then, the Shell Foundation has become involved in many projects across the world, including a partnership with Marks and Spencer (UK) in three flower and fruit growing communities across Africa.

Media in India reported that companies applies CSR due to the connection that it would make. Although the possibility of the connection can be done through a good means, but there are companies just trying to pass the bills on certain jurisdiction and trying to strike deals with politicians as a stepping stone for both sides. The true nature implies that both of them will be benefitting on this on the good conduct that they will be applying.^[66] Lougee (2008)^[67] argued the value of CSR is investor-sacrificing as companies tries to be 'good citizens' and condone to the morality of how things works. This moral judgement is thus differ from the maximising value as per concerned by managers.

Critics concerned with corporate hypocrisy and insincerity generally suggest that better governmental and international regulation and enforcement, rather than voluntary measures, are necessary to ensure that companies behave in a socially responsible manner. A major area of necessary international regulation is the reduction of the capacity of corporations to sue states under investor state dispute settlement provisions in trade or investment treaties if otherwise necessary public health or environment protection legislation has impeded corporate investments.^[68] Others, such as Patricia Werhane, argue that CSR should be considered more as a corporate moral responsibility, and limit the reach of CSR by focusing more on direct impacts of the organization as viewed through a systems perspective to identify stakeholders. For a commonly overlooked motive for CSR, see also Corporate Social Entrepreneurship, whereby CSR can also be driven by employees' personal values, in addition to the more obvious economic and governmental drivers.

...

Crises and their consequences

Often it takes a crisis to precipitate attention to CSR. One of the most active stands against environmental mismanagement is the CERES Principles that resulted after the Exxon Valdez incident in Alaska in 1989 (Grace and Cohen 2006). Other examples include the lead poisoning paint used by toy giant Mattel, which required a recall of millions of toys globally and caused the company to initiate new risk management and quality control processes. In another example, Magellan Metals in the West Australian town of Esperance was responsible for lead contamination killing thousands of birds in the area. The company had to cease business immediately and work with independent regulatory bodies to execute a cleanup. Odwalla also experienced a crisis with sales dropping 90%, and the company's stock price dropping 34% due to several cases of E. coli spread through Odwalla apple juice. The company ordered a recall of all apple or carrot juice products and introduced a new process called "flash pasteurization" as well as maintaining lines of communication constantly open with customers.

Stakeholder priorities

Increasingly, corporations are motivated to become more socially responsible because their most important stakeholders expect them to understand and address the social and community issues that are relevant to them. Understanding what causes are important to employees is usually the first priority because of the many interrelated business benefits that can be derived from increased employee engagement (i.e. more loyalty, improved recruitment, increased retention, higher productivity, and so on). Key external stakeholders include customers, consumers, investors (particularly institutional investors), communities in the areas where the corporation operates its facilities, regulators, academics, and the media.

Branco and Rodrigues (2007) describe the stakeholder perspective of CSR as the inclusion of all groups or constituents (rather than just shareholders) in managerial decision making related to the organization’s portfolio of socially responsible activities.^[109] This normative model implies that the CSR collaborations are positively accepted when they are in the interests of stakeholders and may have no effect or be detrimental to the organization if they are not directly related to stakeholder interests. The stakeholder perspective suffers from a wheel and spoke network metaphor that does not acknowledge the complexity of network interactions that can occur in cross sector partnerships. It also relegates communication to a maintenance function, similar to the exchange perspective.^[110]

Industries considered void of CSR

Several industries are often absent from CSR research. The absence is due to the presumption that these particular industries fail to achieve ethical considerations of their consumers. Typical industries include tobacco and alcohol producers ("sin industry" manufacturers), as well as defense firms^[111]....

forbes 2008

CSR Doesn't Pay

We increasingly hear that corporate social responsibility has become a business imperative. Newspapers, magazines and books glowingly describe the business benefits of behaving responsibly–and caution managers about the business risks of a poor CSR performance.

Executives are repeatedly informed that by demonstrating concern for the environment, human rights, community development and the welfare of their employees both in the U.S. and abroad, they will make their firms more profitable. Their firms will gain a competitive advantage by appealing to the growing numbers of socially and environmentally oriented consumers, investors and employees.

The belief that corporate responsibility “pays” is a seductive one: Who would not want to live in a world in which corporate virtue is rewarded and corporate irresponsibility punished? Unfortunately, the evidence for these rewards and punishment is rather weak. There is a “‘market for virtue,” but it is a very limited one. Nor is it growing.

One can certainly find examples of firms with superior CSR performance that have done well, as well as firms with poor CSR reputations that have performed poorly. But there are at least as many examples of firms with good CSR records that have not done well and firms with poor CSR reputations that rewarded their shareholders.

The good news is that firms with superior CSR performance have not performed any worse than their less virtuous competitors. But the disappointing news is that neither have they done any better. For most firms, most of the time, CSR is largely irrelevant to their financial performance.

Revealingly, the long-term performance of socially responsible investment funds has been no better, or worse, than those of funds that use other criteria to predict future shareholder value.

Part of the reason why CSR does not necessarily pay is that only a handful or consumers know or care about the environmental or social records of more than a handful of firms. “Ethical” products are a niche market: Virtually all goods and services continue to be purchased on the basis of price, convenience and quality.

Although ethical mutual funds have grown in size, they have had no measurable impact on share prices. Mainstream investors still rarely consider a firm’s CSR record in deciding which shares to buy, sell or hold. While many business students now profess an interest in working for more responsible firms, their less responsible competitors appear to have no difficulty in attracting top talent.

Starbucks provides a good example of the limited importance of CSR to financial performance. The firm enjoys a strong CSR reputation due to its generous labor policies and its commitment to improve the earnings and environmental practices of coffee growers in developing countries.

Yet since the beginning of 2008, its shares have recently declined nearly 50% (at last glance the S&P 500 is down “only” 36%). The stock’s disappointing performance has absolutely nothing to do with CSR: It is entirely due to the firm’s overexpansion and, most recently, the increasing unwillingness of consumers to pay as much for a cup of coffee as for a gallon of gasoline.

Other CSR icons, such as Levi Strauss, Gap , Whole Foods and Timberland , have also fared poorly in the marketplace.

General Electric has been widely applauded by environmentalists for its “Ecomagination” line of more energy efficient and environmentally responsible products. These products have sold well, prompting many observers to conclude that for corporate America, “green” has become the new “green.”

Before the recent market chaos, GE’s share price had been stagnant for nearly six years. Whatever GE’s current or projected earnings from Ecomagination, as well as from the firm’s substantial investments in alternative energy, they have been overshadowed by Wall Street’s disappointment with GE’s overall earnings. In fact, GE performed much better under Jack Welch, who was not known for his interest in environmental responsibility. Moreover, GE also continues to make substantial, and highly profitable, investments in the financing and construction of coal-fired power plants, indicating that there is still money to be made by less environmentally responsible behavior.

The firm with possibly the world’s poorest environmental reputation is Exxon Mobil , largely due to its reputed indifference to the problem of global climate change and its continued focus on fossil fuels. Yet Exxon-Mobil is one of the world’s most profitable corporations. Over an extended period of time, it has performed far better financially than BP , which changed its brand to Beyond Petroleum to emphasize its responsibility to help reduce the world’s dependence on fossils fuels, and which, unlike Exxon-Mobil, has supported mandatory greenhouse gas reductions.

The contrast between Exxon-Mobil and BP reveals another limitation of the business case for corporate responsibility. It is often difficult to distinguish responsible and irresponsible firms. While BP may have a more responsible record than Exxon-Mobil when it comes to the issue of global climate change, Exxon-Mobil has recently been far more successful in preventing accidents and avoiding oil spills. It is thus not obvious which firm is more ‘responsible.’

To take another well-known example: Merck has been widely applauded for its development and free distribution of a drug to cure river-blindness, a dreadful disease which affects tens of millions of the world’s poorest people. Yet this same company withheld important information regarding the safety of its highly profitable drug Vioxx.

These examples are not unusual: Few firms are consistently responsible–or irresponsible–across all their business operations.

One can find examples of successful firms for whom CSR has been a core element of their business strategy. Patagonia and Seventh Generation come readily to mind. Other firms such as Dupont , Alcoa and IBM have reaped substantial savings from reducing their energy use while Toyota has successfully marketed hybrid cars.

But it is important not to generalize from these examples. To assume that the business environment has fundamentally changed and that we are entering a new world in which CSR has become critical to the success of all or even mostfirms is misinformed. The market has many virtues, but reconciling corporate goals and public purposes is unfortunately not among them. Managers shouldtry to act more responsibly. But they should not expect the market to necessarily reward them–or punish their less responsible competitors.

David Vogel is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility (Brookings, 2005).

See Our Complete Coverage on Corporate Social Responsibility

Bonner Cohen, et al., ed., "The Fear Profiteers: Do 'Socially Responsible' Businesses Sow Health Scares to Reap Monetary Rewards?", February 2002.
Stewart Fist's Outline of Milloy's lobbying activities: [6]
Tim Lambert, another critique
Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank, Mother Jones, May/June 2005.
Paul Thacker, "The junkman climbs to the top," Environmental Science and Technology Online, May 11, 2005.
Matters for America, August 12, 2005.
Paul Thacker, "Pundit for Hire: Smoked Out", The New Republic, January 26, 2006
Chuck Jaffe, "When Making Money Takes Back Seat to Advocacy," Chicago Tribune, January 26, 2006.
Daniel Gross, "Thank You for Investing," Slate, May 4, 2006.

green co

http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2012/10/20/newsweeks-2012-green-rankings-time-its-serious?page=full

2012

top 10 rankings on the U.S. list include IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sprint Nextel, Dell, CA Technologies, Nvidia, Intel, Accenture, Office Depot, and Staples. The top 10 companies on the global list include Santander (Brazil), Wipro (India), Bradesco (Brazil), IBM (U.S.), National Australia Bank (Australia), BT Group (U.K.), Munich Re (Germany), SAP (Germany), KPN (Netherlands), and Marks & Spencer (U.K.)

Not that there weren’t some big movers, both up and down. For example, the Las Vegas Sands Corp. hit the jackpot, rising 238 slots to #128 on the U.S. list. Goodyear Tire got traction, moving up 178 slots to #74. Hershey’s sweetened its position, rising 172 slots to #256. All told, 26 companies moved up 100 or more places in the U.S. rankings.

Only two companies dropped more than 100 places: Sunoco, which took a spill of 139 places to #331; and Caterpillar, which dug itself 108 points deeper, dropping to #252.

On the global list, 17 companies gained 100 or more slots, 11 of which were U.S-based. Eleven companies dropped 100 or more slots (including only two U.S. firms). Asian companies suffered the biggest losses, including LG, Kia, Bank of China, China Mobile, ICBC, and Agricultural Bank of China among those declining 100 or more slots.

On the other hand, theworst-ranked companieson environmental impact were dominated by financial institutions, including T. Rowe Price, which earned an Environmental Impact Score of zero, tied for last place with Peabody Energy, the world's largest private-sector coal company. How so? Because in Newsweek’s methodology, financial investors are judged by the company they keep — that is, the environmental impacts of the firms in their investment portfolios. By comparison, some chemical and heavy manufacturing companies, like Huntsman, Goodyear, and 3M, scored in the 40s and 50s in environmental impact. That's a bit of cognitive dissonance endemic of trying to apply consistent standards across every sector of the economy.

Another challenge is that supply-chain impacts didn’t seem to play as much of a role in the rankings. The information-technology companies that dominate the top of the Green Rankings — IBM, HP, Sprint, Dell, CA, EMC, and others — all received high Environmental Impact scores largely because they outsource manufacturing to others, keeping their corporate hands relatively clean.

As Salo writes in an article accompanying the Green Rankings:

The Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, along with other suppliers, manufactures Apple’s iPhone 5, which has sold millions of copies since its release this fall. The manufacturing of the iPhone produces pollution; who is responsible for that pollution? Is Foxconn responsible, since the emissions and waste derives from their plants? Or is Apple responsible, since it depends on the services of Foxconn? Both have some responsibility. Without Foxconn or the other suppliers, Apple would not have the iPhone to sell. Some responsibility also sits with the financial institutions that benefit from the shares of Apple stock they own. As the old saying goes, you are what you eat, or in this case, what you profit from.

That’s troubling, and undercuts the value of the Green Rankings somewhat....

http://www.newsweek.com/green-2014

Rank Company Name Sector Score

1 Allergan (NYSE: AGN) Health Care 6.6_FE0223_GreenRankings_US01_Allergan 85.1

2 Adobe Systems (Nasdaq: ADBE) Information Technology 6.6_FE0223_GreenRankings_US02_Adobe 84.4

3 Ball Corporation (NYSE: BLL) Materials 6.6_FE0223_GreenRankings_US03_BallCorp 83.5

4 Ecolab (NYSE: ECL) Materials 6.6_FE0223_GreenRankings_US04_Ecolab 82.6

5 Sigma-Aldrich (Nasdaq: SIAL) Materials 6.6_FE0223_GreenRankings_US05_Sigma-Aldrich 79.7

6 McCormick (NYSE: MKC) Consumer Staples 6.6_FE0223_GreenRankings_US06_Mccormick 77.6

7 Biogen Idec (Nasdaq: BIIB) Health Care 6.6_FE0223_GreenRankings_US07_BiogenIdec 75.7

8 Rockwell Automation (NYSE: ROK) Industrials 6.6_FE0223_GreenRankings_US08_Rockwell 73.7

9 Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH) Health Care 6.6_FE0223_GreenRankings_US09_CardinalHealth 71.0

10 Agilent Technologies (NYSE: A) Health Care 6.6_FE0223_GreenRankings_US10_AgilentTech. 70.9