Recently, I participated in a conversation with our LinkedIn community on GETideas.org. The crux of the discussion was labels--should there be a universal taxonomy for terms such as Global Education, and would trying to foster global adoption of such terms speed up the transformation of the societal challenges we face today? It got me thinking about all sorts of terms that pop into our language stream. One day you’re talking about the “inequalities of the distribution of wealth and the effects of taxation on global markets;” the next day you’re texting an associate and summing up your thought stream with the word “Occupy”.
In my preparation for a panel discussion called Why enterprise Social Media Loves Social Good?, I poked around online to see if there was any consistency in the meaning for the term “social good”. Almost all the discussions and posts I found connected “social good” directly to its use within the business community. While businesses vary in their approaches to social good, this definition seems to be a common one: “A good or service that benefits the largest number of people in the largest possible way. Some classic examples of social goods are clean air, clean water and literacy; in addition, many economic proponents include access to services such as healthcare in their definition of the social or “common good”. (Source: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social_good.asp) Read More »
Today, we released Cisco’s 2011 Corporate Social Responsibility Report. It’s our seventh and it covers our CSR efforts in the areas of governance and ethics, value chain, our people, society, and the environment.
Since the founding of our longest-running CSR program, the Cisco Networking Academy in 1997, our efforts have been authentically grown from the inside out with enthusiastic support from our employees. We believe technology is a powerful tool that can not only help our customers thrive, but bring people together to transform lives, build communities and preserve the environment.
Since its inception, Cisco has aimed to leverage its expertise, technoloy and partnerships for social good. In this year’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report, you will find compelling information about how Cisco addresses issues from the environment to health, from corporate goverance to economic development.
We hope you’ll take some time to learn more about Cisco’s approach to CSR and results over the last year as well as take a look at our objectives for 2012.
Sometimes we forget that collaboration isn’t just something people do at work. In fact, it’s not unique to people at all. And some of the best collaborators out there in the world just ain’t people.
Bees, for instance. They don’t have fancy hardware, software, networks, and mobile devices, yet they’re amazing collaborators. I take that back, they do have networks – just not the kind with Cisco routers and switches behind them.
People are studying bees to figure out how you and I can improve our collaboration. By its own definition, The Biomimicry Institute “promotes learning from and then emulating natural forms, processes, and ecosystems to create more sustainable and healthier human technologies and designs.” A pretty neat idea if you ask me. Read More »
Sustainability 2.0 involves the employment of social media tools to initiate, maintain and monitor sustainability engagement. Companies and institutions are increasingly turning to social media channels to grow corporate social responsibility initiatives of all categories, including sustainability. Sustainability 2.0 involves two components for optimal engagement across any large-scale enterprise organization, or even university campus: 1. promotion and 2. analysis.
Promotion of sustainable actions via social media:
According to a 2011 study by Sustainable Life Media and Zumer, social media is used at 50 global companies to promote sustainability on various engagement levels. Professor Nigel P. Melville of the University of Michigan delivers an action-based summary of the report’s findings on 4,000+ social web posts:
“76% of sustainability professionals interviewed believe that their investment in sustainability-themed social media will help gain market share, increase the size of the overall market, or, ideally, both.”
“Companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Dell and Toyota (all profiled in case studies) have unearthed the enormous potential of combining social media and sustainability to gain market share and acquire customers in new and growing markets.”
“Social media is impacting the way leading corporations are planning and executing their business practices. As an example, companies have been able to increase internal recognition of their sustainability goals, on average, by 10-15% through the use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This is resulting in greater compliance with energy, waste and water efficiency strategies.”
Why select “social media” as a channel for driving environmental activism? People are influenced by social media conversations.
