Month of April , 2007

Sold-Out Crowd of 300 Corporate Responsibility Officers(CRO), and Others Allied to the Newest Corporate Profession Expected to Hit NYC May 10

CRO members and readers celebrate the holiday.

Started in 1970 in response to growing concern about environmental issues and integral to the passage of many important environmental laws since, Earth Day is now celebrated in more than 175 countries and coordinated by the Earth Day Network. We've compiled a short list of the events and initiatives CRO members and readers undertook April 22.

Corporate whistleblowers might need a monetary nudge, researchers suggest.

For a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Alexander Dyck, Adair Morse and Luigi Zingales studied 230 cases of alleged corporate fraud at larger companies between 1996 and 2004. They found that, despite the incentives introduced by Sarbanes-Oxley, whistleblowing numbers decreased in post-SOX cases.

Though some companies are cutting back on corporate responsibility efforts, many can still cash in on their earlier CR investments.

When Citigroup Vice Chair and Chief Administrative Officer Lewis Kaden addressed the 250 attendees of last November’s CRO conference, he talked of Citigroup’s significant buildup in compliance staff and the resulting boost in stakeholder confidence. This week, however, we heard Citigroup’s CEO Charles Prince announce a cutback in the company’s bulging ranks of compliance officers. Citigroup’s swing of the compliance pendulum from intense compliance growth to cutting compliance headcount represents a Russell 1000-wide trend.

How companies can play an important role in addressing environmental, social and economic risk and security.

Imagine the next major disaster: a Katrina, a tsunami, a 9/11, in your hometown or city. Now imagine a situation where your local supermarkets and hardware stores do not close up, leave town and hire private police to protect them from looters. Instead, they open their doors, invite people in and give them the emergency supplies they need. Is it possible for companies to adopt these hypothetical risk assessment techniques?

Talking the benefits of brand-building compliance with Midi President Tom Parry.

Last week, I spoke with Tom Parry, President of Midi, which is now part of publicly traded SAI Global. We discussed how companies have recently switched from using compliance strictly for defense; now, we both noticed, compliance and risk are being used as brand-building tools to sell products, raise capital and recruit talent. It’s something Tom knows a bit about.

A record-breaking 102 entries, 19 short-listed reports and four winners in the sixth year of the awards program.

Canadian firms were once again disproportionately well-represented among the companies submitting reports for this year’s North American Sustainability Reporting awards competition organized by Ceres. The annual awards program, which recognizes exemplary sustainability reporting by corporations and organizations throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico had a record number of submissions this year—102, an increase of more than 15 percent from the year before.