CSRHub Blog Research on ESG metrics and comments on sustainability best practice

Cynthia has joined many thought leaders in Trust, Inc.: Strategies for Building Your Company's Most Important Asset, edited by Barbara Kimmel.  Trust, Inc., steady on the Hot New Release list on Amazon, includes powerful essays by thought leaders like Stephen M. R. Covey & Greg Link, Patricia Aburdene, Amy Lyman, Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner, Lolly Daskal, Bob Whipple, and many others.

“Business must also address real needs and be compassionate and sustainable,” says Figge, who wrote the In Apple We Trust? chapter focusing on Apple's new stated direction in regards to transparency and supply chain.

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Cynthia Figge is a forerunner and thought leader in the corporate sustainability movement. She is COO and Cofounder of CSRHub, the world’s largest database that aggregates and organizes data and knowledge on the social, environmental, and governance performance of 8,400 companies to provide sustainability ratings to the marketplace. In 1996 she co-founded EKOS International, one of the first consultancies integrating sustainability and corporate strategy. Prior to founding EKOS, she was an officer of LIN Broadcasting / McCaw Cellular, and led new businesses and services with Weyerhaeuser, New York Daily News; and with New Ventures. Cynthia is Board Director of the Compassionate Action Network International. Cynthia received her bachelor's degree in Economics and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. She lives in the Seattle area.

CSRHub Cofounder and COO, Cynthia Figge, is speaking at the New Metrics of Sustainable Business conference sponsored by Sustainable Brands on September 24-25, 2013 at the University of Pennsylvania. Cynthia will be speaking on 2 topics:Evening Plenary Discussion: New Metrics for Trust, Reputation and Green Brand ValueAre current leading measures of trust, reputation and brand value adequate? Up to speed with a rapidly changing landscape of stakeholders' attitudes? What co-creative efforts might assessment and data providers engage in to get to improved metrics of evolving notions of trust, reputation and brand value? How can brands stay ahead of that process?Amy du Pon
Global Head of Data Insights, Havas Media Group

Cynthia Figge
Co-Founder, CSRHub

Denis Riney
Senior Partner, Marketing, BrandLogic

David Metcalfe
CEO & Co-Founder, VerdantixCompare and Contrast: Sustainability Performance Ratings and RankingsWith over 100 organizations working on some kind of sustainability performance rating or ranking, how can companies decide which one(s) to focus on, or manage against? What do the people behind some of the most popular methodologies out there worry about, and is there any order to this seemingly chaotic situation? What should brands worry about in this confusing picture?Mark Tulay
Program and Organizational Development Executive, Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR)

Toby Heaps
CEO, Corporate Knights

Bob Mann
COO, Sustainalytics

Cynthia Figge
Co-Founder, CSRHub

Register today at www.sbiif.com/register using the code NWSPKNM for 20% off an All Event or 1-day ticket for the conference.

Cynthia Figge is a forerunner, thought leader and speaker on the corporate sustainability movement. As the co-founder and COO of CSRHub, Cynthia's team provides free corporate sustainability ratings on over 8,400 publicly-traded and private companies worldwide. In addition to CSRHub, Cynthia is the co-founder of EKOS International, one of the first consultancies to integrate sustainability and corporate strategy. She has crafted corporate sustainability strategies for a host of major organizations, including BNSF, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Dow Jones, and REI. Cynthia also serves as an advisor to SNS Future in Review, Board Director of Compassionate Action Network, and served as President of the Board of Sustainable Seattle. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School. Prior speaking engagements in corporate responsibility have included SRI Basecamp, Future in Review, Sustainable Brands, and SRI in the Rockies.

An article in today's Wall Street Journal surprised me with a poll that showed American voters trust big business even less than they trust members of Congress.  Banks (treated as a separate category by the Gallup pollsters who did this work) have zoomed downward in trust terms since 2006, and are now just a smidge above Congress.  The Supreme Court was the last party mentioned--and its trustworthiness seems to be rising.

To put a number on things, about 18% of voters felt big businesses could be trusted--down from about 25% in 1990.  I don't know where lawyers and used car salespeople would rank...but it couldn't be much worse.  I suspect that a series of big-business-bashing movies have reinforced these feelings and concerns.  And events such as the oil spill in the Gulf and the coal mine disaster in West Virginia don't help.

Interestingly, it seems to me that businesses are acting much more responsibly than they did 20 years ago.  We certainly see a growing interest in the corporate social responsibility issues we track at CSRHUB.  More than 8,000 companies report now on their CSR performance--and they can't all be lying!  The Web (and tools like ours) are bringing transparency and visibility that helps hold companies responsible when they do wrong.  I hope that soon the many companies who are doing good will also start to earn the trust they deserve, for the positive actions they are taking.