This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Where brand leaders meet
Mattel, manufacturer of some of the world’s most beloved toys, was named to the “100 Best Corporate Citizens 2007” and yet, two million Mattel toys have been recalled due to a possible lead-paint hazard in a Chinese factory. On the company’s website, “Global Manufacturing Principles” are depicted as the top tier of social responsibility. This makes me weary of other brands that are claiming to be socially responsible. Has social responsibility become just another form of greenwashing? How can we really trust a brand to be socially responsible?
-Hiley Spaet
2 Responses to “Socially responsible?”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Pages
Login
Upcoming Events
- No events.
Polls
Loading ...
August 29th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Some industries who have seen the specter of consumer boycotts or just declining sales due to social responsibility concerns that threaten their brand (like Nike) have taken steps to actively manage their supply chain to detect things not in alignment with their values - child labor, toxic materials in the manufacturing process, and so forth. Other industries have contracted with 3rd party certifiers - the Fair Trade coffee industry tracks both social and environmental performance of the coffee that Starbucks sells as free trade. However, that free trade coffee makes up
August 29th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Social responsibility is a continuum - but if a company integrates it into their mission at an executive level, it is more likely to make responsible decisions up and down the board. Most large companies lurch in the direction of social responsibility only when threatened by market share loss - Nike and labor standards for example. Nike now has an admirable, though not foolproot, audit process for its suppliers. Starbucks makes a big deal of their fair trade coffee, but it still only represents less than 5% of their sales. They nonetheless want their brand to reflect the glow of social responsibility for their efforts. Companies that were founded with a clear vision of being responsible have a much easier time implementing responsibility programs than existing firms with dominant cultures already in place that reward behaviors other than social responsibility.