The Executive’s Guide to 21st Century Corporate Citizenship provides a major update on how to ‘do’ corporate citizenship, showing senior managers how they can win the reputation battle and deliver value to society while creating the most successful business possible in today’s competitive landscape.

The Executive’s Guide to 21st Century Corporate Citizenship provides a major update on how to ‘do’ corporate citizenship, showing senior managers how they can win the reputation battle and deliver value to society while creating the most successful business possible in today’s competitive landscape.

This book presents a step-by-step process aimed at helping you create the most successful business possible in the 21st century competitive landscape, empowering corporate citizenship professionals to accelerate their credibility within their company as an effective contributor who understands their company’s strategy and who creates value.

Corporate citizenship refers to the way a company integrates basic social values with everyday business practices, operations and policies. A corporate citizenship company understands that its own success is intertwined with societal health and well being. Therefore, it takes into account its impact on all stakeholders, including employees, customers, communities, suppliers, and the natural environment. This handbook draws from the author?s experience crafting and implementing philanthropic and volunteer strategies with companies such as IBM, Exxon, Mobil, 3M, and General Mills. A step-by-step primer on creating a comprehensive corporate citizenship program, The Good Corporate Citizen lays out how companies can maximize this exciting new trend. Doris Rubenstein (Minneapolis, MN) has worked for over 25 years with some of America?s most respected nonprofit organizations.

Against a backdrop of corporate scandal, business leaders can no longer rely on the old-fashioned style of one-sided community relations programs to promote a good image. Nor can they expect preferential treatment just because they meet their tax obligations. Pressure from all sides is forcing corporate leaders to increase their investments in the communities they serve and redefining their relationships with key stakeholder groups, including employees, suppliers, governing boards, shareholders, and the press. Safeguarding the environment, supporting human rights, eliminating child labor, entering into partnerships with nonprofit organizations, solving community problems, opening up financial reports to scrutiny, consulting with community residents, and contributing to local charities are now essential elements of corporate character. Managing a Company in an Activist World takes the discussion of corporate citizenship to a new practical level, offering business leaders answers to such tough questions as: What do our stakeholders value most? How can we respond to a growing number of formal compliances and informal demands? How do we most effectively communicate our role as a good corporate citizen? And, perhaps most importantly, how can we shake off inertia, public skepticism, and short-term focus to make corporate citizenship a priority without sacrificing growth and profits? Illustrating the depth and breadth of the issues through a variety of in-depth examples—from Jesse Jackson's threatened boycott of Anheuser-Busch to rural Virginians' uprising against Disney's proposed theme park to energy giant BC Hydro's successful response to environmentalists' concerns—Burke demonstrates how community involvement can influence corporate strategy to everyone's net benefit. He goes on to outline specific strategies that corporate leaders can employ to shake off inertia, public skepticism, and short-term focus to make corporate citizenship a priority without sacrificing growth and profits.

The international community has policy tools to influence business activity within and between nations, and to help ensure that globalization proceeds in a way that benefits all. These tools include legislation and regulatory frameworks, voluntary compliance with an agreed set of standards monitored by a third party, or self-regulation by businesses, often in conformance with voluntary codes of conduct. Balancing corporate investment with community investment is the way of the future. With growing public interest and concern regarding the sustainability of communities as globalization deepens, it will be necessary to show that the nations are working together to ensure that the activities of the business community make a positive contribution to the communities in which they do business. With all these points in the backdrop, the book aims at underlining the big-picture thinking on issues related to the roles that business can play in fostering a moral, equitable and ecologically sustainable world.