Companies have finally begun to understand the true importance of stakeholder engagement when it comes to CSR, and are now implementing various techniques to connect with these groups and learn from them.

A recent book - 'Leveraging Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Route to Maximizing Business and Social Value' - goes deeper than any other we have seen in discussing this increasingly central CSR topic.

The main premise is that without a proper understanding of various stakeholders and how differently they may react to brands and CSR initiatives, many such efforts are bound to fail.

There are many valuable lessons in this book, but one particularly resonated with me. more

Two recent studies have given us a clearer picture about what sustainability actually means to executives and investors.

The first one comes from Harvard Business School, and it says that investors are showing more interest in non-financial information about companies. The authors know this by looking at what environmental, social, and governance (ESG) terms investors are searching for on the Bloomberg database.

For example, there were 2,395,230 hits for "ESG Disclosure Score" versus 606,998 hits for "UN Global Compact Signatory." Or 109,883 hits for "Total CO2 Emissions" versus 78,499 hits for "Fair Remuneration Policy." more

Apparently, green marketing is dead. In the past months, several media outlets have reported about the so-called death of green marketing, relying on studies that show that consumers are (still) not changing their purchasing behavior based on green claims. Price remains the number-one criteria for purchasing decisions, so now we are being told that if your marketing message is to succeed, the green angle must be mixed in adroitly with price and quality attributes. more