Category: Corporate Culture

Why a green company culture is the key to corporate sustainability

Want to reduce your company’s environmental impact, but not sure where to start? Whether you’re a large or small business, embarking on the quest for sustainability might feel overwhelming if your operations have been less than planet-friendly in the past. Take a deep breath, small steps, and some pointers from an organization that’s on a similar journey. When you’re ready to boost your firm’s sustainability efforts, start by challenging the common assumption that industry and sustainability don’t mix. While these two ideas may seem at odds in action, the corporate sphere is proving they go hand in hand. To have a chance of achieving corporate sustainability, you must believe your business can drive positive environmental outcomes. The road to a greener business? Laying a foundation of sustainability in your work culture. Here’s your guide to building sustainability into your corporate value system.

Ethical eCommerce & Social Responsibility

As social and environmental awareness grows, consumers and businesses increasingly value ethical practices. In fact, according to the 2018 Conscious Consumer Spending Index, 59% of people buy goods or services from companies they consider socially responsible. 32% of Americans plan to spend even more in the coming years with companies that align with their social values. Customers are embracing ethical eCommerce, from online stores that are selling products fair-trade, to online businesses that give back to their communities in some way. Shoppers are also experiencing growing concerns about the environmental impacts of their purchasing choices. They increasingly seek out commerce sites that clearly outline their eco-friendly efforts, offer high quality, sustainable products, and embrace manufacturing processes that minimize their environmental footprint. In particular, online fashion trends are leaning into “reuse, re-wear, recycle,” styles, with many retailers offering discounts for returning old garments, and resale sites like Poshmark and thredUP catering almost exclusively to reselling clothing.

What Is Ethical Culture, and Why Does It Matter?

Culture exists in the space between what an organization professes and what it does. Jay Rosen explains why it’s important to pay attention to culture: disconnects can be quite costly. Over the past few months, senior leaders at both the Department of Justice (DOJ), and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), have given speeches discussing the need for appropriate corporate culture around compliance. So, this brings up our first question for our next five-part series, what is corporate culture?

How to Design an Ethical Organization

From Volkswagen’s emissions fiasco to Wells Fargo’s deceptive sales practices to Uber’s privacy intrusions, corporate scandals are a recurring reality in global business. Compliance programs increasingly take a legalistic approach to ethics that focuses on individual accountability. Yet behavioral science suggests that people are ethically malleable, so creating an ethical culture means thinking about ethics not simply as a belief problem but also as a design problem. The authors suggest four ways to make being good as easy as possible: Connect ethical principles to strategies and policies, keep ethics top of mind, reward ethical behavior through a variety of incentives, and encourage ethical norms in day-to-day practices.

How to Keep Up with the Rise of Ethical Ecommerce

Do you test on animals? Did you really need to use such a big box? Where has this been shipped from? How and where was this product made?

These are all questions brands are being asked every day about how ethical your brand is. Without an answer, you may find your sales dropping and consumers looking elsewhere. With environmental concerns becoming progressively more prominent in modern society, an increasing number of people, particularly millennials, are paying close attention to the ethics of brands. As this post will explore, it’s more important than ever to focus on consumer activism and keep up with the ever-growing rise of ethical ecommerce.

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