Starting this month (and continuing every week), I’m sharing with you, every Friday, what I’m reading for the week – what intrigues me, inspires me, ignites me, irritates me – and what just makes me angry. I hope it will inspire you to read something new, and in turn, I hope you will share interesting news and reads with me.
So, here goes:
On the Forum for the Future blog, Sally Yuren, deputy chief executive of the organization, explores three must-have “apps” for sustainability practitioners to be mindful of in 2012. I’m partial to the “How to (Begin to) Rethink Capitalism” app. This app demands that we answer a tough question: “what happens to your business in the event of the end of free nature and free labor?” Of course, we all know that starting to answer that question, however imperfectly, bodes better for our planet than blatantly ignoring it. Ignorance is, in fact, not bliss.
Over at the McKinsey Quarterly, a trio of thinkers tackles the question: What really drives value in corporate responsibility? The challenge is communicating the benefits of investments in social initiatives and changing stakeholder behavior, perception and attitudes, in the process.
Additionally, I’m happy to see that:
- Twelve California companies have seized the opportunity to become B-Corporations.
- The UN International Year of Cooperatives has kicked off. Truly, worker ownership models are the key to global prosperity.
- My friend Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, is talking up the benefits of governmental regulations and restrictions. As he says, market rule only benefits the “big guys.”
- CSRwire has hired a great CSR professional and writer — Aman Singh. Congrats, Aman!
But, I’m dismayed to see how the effects of Citizen’s United haunted the Iowa caucuses. The only winner in Iowa on Tuesday night was the Big Money Super PAC.
What are you reading? Please share it with me here on this blog. Knowledge-sharing is always welcome here.
I am re-reading Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies Paradise). It provides a brilliant depiction of the first major department store in Paris driving artisanal tradesmen out of business with its cheaper prices and better selection. The founder of the store develops sales techniques such as carefully plotting the route that his customers take from one department to another so that they will, on impulse, make more purchases that they can afford. There are no better textbooks on the origins of capitalism than Zola’s and especially Balzac’s novels. They are all at some level about exploitation of the working class, and men separating the more vulnerable and gullible from their money.
Wonderful idea, Jeffrey.
I am reading the following books:
David J. Linden “The Accidental Mind – How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God”
Lisa Randall “Knocking on Heaven’s Door – How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World”
Owen Jones “Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class”
On the topic of sustainability, I am reading “Resource Efficiency Atlas- An International perspective on technologies and products with resource efficiency potential” published by the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Germany