The Australian Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ACCSR) is Australia’s leading specialist corporate social responsibility services provider. The centre provides advisory, research and training services in corporate social responsibility to a wide range of clients in the public, private and government sectors.

Harvard Business School professor Lynn S. Paine’s book, Value Shift, argues that companies can’t consider themselves amoral or apart from society anymore—that the relationship between companies and society at large necessitates bringing a moral dimension to decision making. In this interview with HBS Working Knowledge’s Carla Tishler, Paine explains why this shift has occurred, and why now.

A registered charity in Hong Kong, Community Business is committed to
working with companies on corporate social responsibility. Its mission is to “Inspire, lead and support businesses to continually improve their positive impact on people and communities”

The latest news on Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Ethics from around the world

CSRwire is a source of corporate social responsibility and sustainability, press releases, reports and information. CSRwire members are companies and NGOs, agencies and organizations interested in communicating their corporate citizenship, sustainability, and socially responsible initiatives to a global audience through CSRwire’s syndication network and weekly News Alerts.
See RSS feed on the left of this page.

The Australian Institute for Corporate Responsibility (AICR) provides cutting-edge corporate responsibility resources for large, medium and small business and community organisations.

Formed through an alliance between Our Community, Shannon’s Way and Deloitte, the AICR provides Australian companies with access to the practical knowledge needed to manage, implement, sustain and measure high-quality community engagement and corporate responsibility programs.

The United Nations’ Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has pioneered the development of the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting framework and is committed to its continuous improvement and application worldwide. This framework sets out the principles and indicators that organizations can use to measure and report their economic, environmental, and social performance.

An international network of thousands from business, civil society, labor, and professional institutions create the content of the Reporting Framework in a consensus-seeking process.

Beyond Grey Pinstripes is a biennial survey and alternative ranking of business schools. Our mission is to spotlight innovative full-time MBA programs that are integrating issues of social and environmental stewardship into curricula and research.

The Corporate Responsibility Index (CRI), licensed to St James Ethics Centre for use in Australia and New Zealand, is a strategic management tool designed by business for business.

The Corporate Responsibility Index was developed to help improve corporate responsibility by providing a systematic process that assists companies to identify their non-financial risk, as well as develop and improve corporate responsibility in line with their business strategy. It provides a benchmark for companies which are committed to managing, measuring and reporting their impact on society and the environment.

Launched in 1999, the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes are the first global indexes tracking the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide. Based on the cooperation of Dow Jones Indexes, STOXX Limited and SAM they provide asset managers with reliable and objective benchmarks to manage sustainability portfolios.

goodcompany’s Engage Program makes it easy for corporate staff to volunteer their skills with one of our 670 community groups. We understand the challenges faced by both the corporate and community sectors. Our Engage Program provides a seamless, credible and effective solution that achieves better outcomes for corporates and community groups.

SVA works with innovative non-profit organisations to increase their growth and impact to drive transformational social change.

Our activities are focused on three areas – supporting a selected portfolio of non-profit organisations, consulting to the broader non-profit sector and developing social sector partnerships.

Peoples’ movements around the world are working to demonstrate that the path to sustainable development, social and economic justice lies in alternative models for people-centred and self-reliant progress, rather than in neo-liberal globalisation.

The World Social Forum (WSF) developed as a response of the growing international movement to neo-liberal globalisation and the effects of neo-liberal economic policies being pursued in most countries. While international financial and trade institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation make prescriptions to be followed by countries across the globe that affect the lives of people all over the world, the effects of such decisions are poorly understood in many cases. People in developing countries, as well as the poor and excluded sectors of developed countries continue to grapple with new situations that are being thrown as a result of the thrust towards globalization.

Shell has announced its sponsorship of the third Middle East Corporate Social Responsibility Summit, a regional initiative it launched six years ago to demonstrate its commitment to Sustainable Development of the communities within which it operates.

Around the world, a new form of social change is taking place. In contrast to traditional NGOs, a core set of extraordinary individuals and organizations—called social entrepreneurs—are using business rigor to develop and implement economically-sustainable, high-impact solutions to social and environmental problems. We at Social Profit Network are working with some of the most powerful social entrepreneurs in the world, helping to scale their solutions and maximize their impact.

Social Entrepreneurs – providing innovative solutions to pressing social problems using free-market principles.

Established in 2005, The Center for Social-Profit Leadership is dedicated to serving and supporting the leadership requirements of innovative social entrepreneurs by providing access to the highest quality faculty composed of business, academic, leadership and social entrepreneurial professionals.

The mission of Social Edge to inform social entrepreneurs about news and opportunities, educate them with a set of information resources in the field and connect them to each other and the broader community with tools and services that support their work. Social Edge is a program of the Skoll Foundation that was inspired by Jeff Skoll’s commitment to connecting people with shared passions.

This site is part of the personal site of Mallen Baker – Development Director for Business in the Community.

It is an expression of his own interest and concern in how companies respond to the agenda for corporate citizenship – the growing need to manage issues that affect their business reputation – and to respond to the growing needs and concerns of a range of different stakeholders.

Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) provides socially responsible business solutions to many of the world’s leading corporations. Headquartered in San Francisco and with offices in Europe and China, BSR is a nonprofit business association that serves its 250 member companies and other Global 1000 enterprises.

Article from The Hindu: India’s National Newspaper, suggesting that concern for the community is often mistaken for socialism. On the contrary, capitalism thrives only when every citizen is an asset in economic activity and has opportunities to succeed.

Article from the Hindu Business Line Financial Daily, suggesting that over the years, companies have realised that clubbing business with community welfare is the best approach to continuity and profitability.

Article from GreenBiz News, suggesting CSR reporting has grown over the past few years, but the information provided by those reports isn’t always used for strategic advantage. Tying values and measures to a Balanced Scorecard could be the way to make good intentions more profitable.

The Centre in Graz, Austria, was established in 1988 and is the Graz unit of the Faculty for Interdisciplinary Studies (IFF) of the University of Klagenfurt. Within the faculty it belongs to the Department of Research on Science and Technology.

IFZ is an interdisciplinary research institute dealing with issues of socially and environmentally sound technology design. In our work we attempt to improve the understanding of technology’s role in society and develop new approaches to shape technological change.

Ethical Junction brings together businesses and consumers who share a commitment to ethical values. Our directory gives easy access to products and services while ‘Pulse’, its news forum, is the source of up to date information on events as well as opinions and comment.

The Center for Ethical Leadership is organized around a question: What kind of leadership does the common good need at this time in this place?

What we often hear people tell us is that we need leaders who:

Create Gracious Space as a tool for change.

Put their values in action to serve the common good.

Bring people together, across boundaries, to form collective leadership.

Ask compelling questions to initiate change that matters.

Since 1990, the David Suzuki Foundation has worked to find ways for society to live in balance with the natural world that sustains us. Focusing on four program areas – oceans and sustainable fishing, climate change and clean energy, sustainability, and the Nature Challenge – the Foundation uses science and education to promote solutions that conserve nature and help achieve sustainability within a generation.

Wikipedia entry describing Social Capital as a core concept in business, organizational behaviour, political science and sociology, defined as the advantage created by a person’s location in a structure of relationships.

The core message of this thoughtful article from “Fast Company.com” is that courage is the enforcing virtue, the one that makes possible all the other virtues common to exceptional leaders: honesty, integrity, confidence, compassion, and humility. In short, leaders who lack courage aren’t leaders.

The Social Investment Forum is the U.S. national nonprofit membership association for professionals, firms and organizations dedicated to advancing the practice and growth of socially responsible investing (SRI). Critical to responsible investment practice is the consideration of environmental, social and corporate governance criteria in addition to standard financial analysis. Forum members support SRI through portfolio selection analysis, shareholder advocacy and community.

There are many web sites about this ancient town – this is one of them.

The town of Glastonbury was recreated in the United States, amazingly with a very similar culture.
Wikipedia describes Glastonbury, Connecticut as “Glastonbury is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 31,876 at the 2000 census. The town was named after the English Glastonbury. Glastonbury is located on the banks of the Connecticut River, south east from Hartford. The town center is also defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as a census-designated place (CDP).”

Public opinion is increasingly influential in corporate decision-making, writes columnist Sebastian Mallaby in an August 7 2006 Washington Post op-ed.

One person’s vision to spread Kindness as a way of Life…

With changing demography and generational changes in the workforce and with the unemployment rate in Australia at 1.25% in common with many other countries in the world standing at generationally low levels, it is more important than ever that recruitment and retention of employeees is seen as a strategic, board level initiative within organisations. However, most Australian organisations still consider recruitment to be a distress purchase and not something that needs to be planned for or factored into wider business planning.

As such, this report, the third in the Workplace Barometer series asks how equipped HR professionals are to think strategically and manage resources from a risk perspective. Are they focusing upon short term hiring needs rather than planning for talent resources? Are HR Managers too busy fighting fires to work strategically?

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations. Collectively, they are how Bruce Mau and his team approach every project. They may be of use to you in your life journey.

Global Directions is based in Sydney. An independent think-tank, examining economics, international law, international relations and social trends from an interdisciplinary approach, with a very humanistic flavour.
Global Directions was founded by Dr Keith Suter: a futurist, thought leader, media personality and powerful thought provoking keynote speaker in the areas of social policy and foreign affairs.