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Here's a news flash: Public trust in corporations is at an all-time low, and consumers and investors are voting with their wallets. But have you, as a business leader, really thought deeply about why that is and what you can do about it?
Rick Petersen thinks about it a lot, and in May he threw out some context for a small gathering of businesspeople at the Halifax Club organized by the Atlantic Lottery Corporation. The youthful and articulate Petersen was in town to address the World Lottery Association on corporate social responsibility, or CSR, which is his area of expertise at National Public Relations. Rick's presentation took a sober accounting of the confluence of global realities that is shaping consumer and shareholder behaviour. These all-powerful entities want to know two things: How sustainable is your business for the long term? How are you managing your responsibilities to society?
These are tough questions for companies to ask themselves, but business leaders who remain in denial about such critical issues as climate change, peak oil, population growth, and workers' rights might as well be operating without strategies for raising capital, marketing, or recruiting and retaining talented people. The point is, concludes Petersen, sustainability and responsibility—or long-term corporate viability, as he calls it—must be as much a part of your corporate DNA as the most obvious elements of a business strategy.
Corporate social responsibility is something Gerry McConnell lives and breathes, although he never uses the phrase. The soft-spoken entrepreneur is |
much more likely to talk about his company's social commitments in plain language, describing its approach as simply doing the right thing or doing what you say you're going to do. He runs Etruscan Resources Inc., a junior mining company based in Windsor, N.S., which operates in West and South Africa. What sets Etruscan apart in the mining industry is that it doesn't see its social commitments as being a sideline to its corporate objectives; rather, they shape the company's corporate culture. In his quiet way, Gerry will also tell you that it's just a good way to do business. Regular Progress magazine readers may recall that in January, Progress publisher Neville Gilfoy saw firsthand the impact of Etruscan's economic and social contributions when he visited Niger and Burkina Faso on a mission organized by the Rotary Club of Dartmouth.
Unrelated to all this but around the same time, I had learned about Gerry McConnell through my friend Martha Reynolds, who is helping Nova Scotia wine producers form an association to grow and promote their industry. As it turns out, Gerry and his wife, Dara Gordon, are also the owners of a six-hectare organic vineyard and enthusiastic practitioners of cool-climate viticulture, as they say in the Gaspereau Valley. When I got to know Gerry myself, it was a no-brainer that he was the ideal choice to lead off our annual People Issue. Along with Gerry, the other 24 men and women profiled in these pages reflect the new face of Atlantica. Entrepreneurs and community leaders, scientists and volunteers, artists, scholars, and inventors—these are the people making progress today. Welcome to a new state of mind. |
