Month of October , 2006

Interested in advertising with The CRO? Download a copy of our 2006 and 2007 media kits to view our editorial calendar, circulation, and advertising rates.

For more information, please e-mail advertising@thecro.com or call Jonathan Campbell at 646-213-0067 x107 or Jonathan Sroka at 646-213-0067 x100.

2006 Media Kit

2007 Media Kit

This section highlights interviews with corporate responsibility officers and experts in the field.

For several years, Business Ethics Magazine addressed real-life managerial dilemmas in its popular column “What Would You Do?” The most recent of these columns are listed below:

Ethics of Edits
Unethical Behavior in Ethics Class
His Most Trusted Employee Was a Thief
Should Fred Say No to an Easy $14,000?

Starting in 2007, CRO Magazine will introduce its own editorial advice column—this time, with reader input.

E-mail us your questions or dilemmas regarding corporate responsibility, and we will identify experts in the arena to address the most pertinent questions. Also, look for future online Q&A session with experts, where you can submit your questions and chat in real time.

Note: CSR, compliance, environmental, and legal consultants who are interested in serving as advisors or guest writers in this area, please e-mail editorial@thecro.com.

At the same time that CRO Corp, LLC is committed to bringing you information tailored to your individual needs, we recognize the importance of protecting the privacy of personally identifiable information collected about you, our customers and prospects. In adopting this customer privacy policy, our intent is to balance our legitimate business interests in collecting and using information with your reasonable expectations of privacy.

CRO Corp, LLC does not collect personally identifying information about individuals, except when specifically and knowingly provided by such individuals.

See the full list here.

A hopeful metamorphosis is under way in corporate America. Embracing goals beyond the traditional focus on earnings, the best companies are focusing on a host of social issues. They are, in short, serving not only stockholders, but other stakeholders as well. Any by stakeholders we mean those with a "stake" in the company: employees, customers, community members, and stockholders. As the performance of our 100 Best Corporate Citizens shows, serving this new community of stakeholders is just good business. One benefit, for example, is attracting and retaining employees. As Beth Sawi, chief administrative officer at Charles Schwab, puts it, employees come to Schwab "for something more than just the bottom line."

See the full list here.

Last year’s national election debacle has certainly left more than one U.S. citizen wondering what citizenship is worth. In an era of faltering government leadership it is fortunate that a growing number of U.S. corporations are taking their own sense of "citizenship" more seriously. Many companies are going to unusual lengths to address the needs and concerns of their various stakeholders, groups that have a stake in or are impacted by a company’s activities. The best among major public companies – as measured by service to seven stakeholder groups – have made this year’s list of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens.

See the full list here.

It’s one of the oldest questions in the field of business ethics: Does socially responsible behavior pay off on the bottom line? New research shows it does, based on last year’s list of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens. The overall financial performance of the 2001 list of the 100 Best firms was "significantly better" than the remaining companies in the S&P 500, according to recent analysis by Elizabeth A. Murphy and Curtis C. Verschoor, professors in the School of Accountancy and Management Information Sciences at De Paul University in Chicago. The difference was "strikingly large," Verschoor wrote in Strategic Finance magazine, January 2002. Using Business Week’s ranking of firms by financial performance (based on factors like sales growth, profit growth, and return on equity), the mean ranking of the 100 Best was "more than 10 percentile points higher" than other firms. The 100 Best Corporate Citizens also had a "significantly better reputation among corporate directors, security analysts, and senior executives, based on the 2001 Fortune magazine survey of "most admired companies,’" Verschoor wrote. "This may be the most concrete evidence now available that good citizenship really does pay off on the bottom line."

In Brazil, poor kids with no access to school used to burrow under the fence at a Cummins Inc. manufacturing plant, to steal metal they could sell for money. "We talked to the local mayor and ended up deciding to fund the construction of a local school that now serves 800 kids," said Tim Solso, chairman and CEO of Columbus, Ind.-based Cummins. "Their parents can now get schooling at night too. Our workers were so pleased by how the community reacted, they went ahead and also built a community health center," Solso added. "Our employees truly believe in helping out communities where they live and operate." This kind of commitment to communities is one thing corporate citizenship means at Cummins, No. 2 this year among the 100 Best Corporate Citizens.

At Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Waterbury, Vt., a newcomer to the list this year at No. 8, good citizenship includes fair dealing with suppliers. "Our president and CEO Robert Stiller visited places where coffee is grown and was struck by the levels of poverty. He wanted to do something about it," said Rick Peyser, director of public relations. Today, with suppliers at small farmer cooperatives in Peru, Mexico, and Sumatra, Green Mountain pays Fair Trade prices for coffee beans -- not the market price of 24 to 50 cents per pound, but a minimum of $1.26 per pound for conventional coffee and $1.41 for organically grown. In 2002, these Fair Trade purchases represented 8 percent of sales. Green Mountain also has a "farm direct" program that cuts out middlemen to deliver higher prices to farmers. Roughly a quarter of its coffee purchases are farm direct.

The Fifth Annual list of the best-managed U.S. firms. See the full list here.

"We have a slogan around here," says Robert W. Lane, chairman and CEO of Moline, Ill. - based Deere & Company. "‘No smoke, no mirrors, no tricks: just right down the middle ofthe field.’ That’s John Deere." It’s the kind of straight talk onewould expect from a Midwestern maker of farm machinery.And it’s the kind of straight dealing that characterizes the 100 Best Corporate Citizens when they’re at their very best. John Deere ranked No. 6 among the 100 Best this year. When told he had made the list, Lane responded: "It’s recognition like this that makes you want to get up in the morning."