corporate responsbility

   Good news. Corporate responsibility makes it through the recession. Hurrah. An article in the Financial Times by Michael Skapinker supports his argument by citing that despite the recession where people are cutting down on premium foods, only about 10% have cut back on ethical produce. And Marks and Spencer (M&S) who made a big bet on sustainability with its Plan A (there is no Plan B!), is saving money on its CSR practices. So that’s all good news for those of us who believe that corporate responsibility is an integral component of reputation and one that has not let us down (nor have we let it down).  The last paragraph of Skapinker’s article says it well:

 

“This [saving money] is the key to companies’ stubborn adherence to corporate social responsibility. They have worked out how to make it pay. Many of their initiatives help to cut costs or sustain supplies. They allow customers to continue to regard themselves as ethical during difficult times. They also help the companies to improve their public reputations at a time when business is widely held to be responsible for the downturn.”

 

Not surprisingly when I first read this paragraph, I read public reputations as public relations. In a way, this confirms why I am in the public relations field – to improve public reputations. Since there is no such thing anymore as an UNpublic reputation (everything internal is external today), I can really say that I am in the field of public reputations. I like this twist.

 

On another but somewhat importantly-related subject, I was reading about last year’s Sichuan Earthquake in a newsletter published by knowledge@wharton (you should subscribe if you don't already). I was in China weeks after the earthquake and wrote about it on my blog at the time. In fact, a lot of the media coverage I received was in response to whether I thought companies were doing enough. The recent article does an excellent job of explaining what I experienced about the fiercely negative images of some multinationals (MNCs) in terms of corporate giving perceptions. I saw that some MNCs were on these shame lists that were being circulated online and inciting boycotts and negative opinion. The general consensus in China was that MNCs were not contributing enough and not in a timely manner to the 70,000 earthquake victims who lost their lives and five million left homeless. At the time, I did not know that there was a term for these maligned MNCs but the article references them as “international iron roosters” – that is, birds that do not give up one single feather. In other words, tightfisted. Being sensitive to negative public sentiment, many of these MNCs increased their charitable donations and met with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce to understand what was expected of them in China. I should note, and so does the Wharton authors, that even Chinese companies were criticized for insufficient donations to earthquake victims.

 

The article points out three must-dos when it comes to China and maintaining your reputation in challenging times. These should be on every company’s What to Do list if something like this happens again and you want to keep your reputation intact. They are:

 

1.     Get Straight to the Top or Distribute Decision-Making. Since many MNCs have multi-layered levels of management and multi-faceted reporting lines, companies need to have a clear, direct lines to the top when decisions are urgent and reputations are at stake. Companies should prepare processes for determining when a decision is urgent. Much of the problems that beset MNCs were the bureaucracy that needed to be hacked through to get a decision made about how much could be contributed. If this is too hard, companies should give local managers the necessary decision-making authority.

2.     Decide Fast and Make Visible. Some companies were criticized because their contributions came late or they did not make their donations known. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, some U.S. companies kept their donations quiet because they did not want it to look like they were only donating to improve their public images. In addition, many companies in the U.S. are torn between being humble or vocal when it comes to corporate responsibility. But in China during an incident of such horrific magnitude, those companies that kept quiet were seen as non-contributors and blamed for being insensitive and profit-mongers. So speak up.

3.     Find your Advocates and Use Your Online Resources to the Max. Since such a large proportion of Chinese citizens are online, make sure you know what is being said about your company and its contributions. Your reputation matters and myths and rumors spread like wildfire. For all you know, you are on some boycott list and people are picketing your stores and products. Find your fans or advocates and make sure they are there to support your efforts or correct misunderstandings, online and offline.

 

Thanks to Skapinker and to knowledge@wharton for making this a good learning day when I should be outside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In an article from Tom Friedman today on Pirates and U.S. foreign policy, he said. “The issues we have with them look less like problems that can be solved and more like conditions that we have to manage.” This made me think about social media – not easily solved but you need to manage. This week I was talking to a company about the importance of online reputation management and the need to be prepared and understand how to use this media if your “Dell moment” arrives.  I do not think I made much headway because they felt safer being under the radar.  Companies might not be able to solve the countless ways that their reputations can be harmed online (think Dominos pizza) but they need to try to manage their online reputations because doing nothing or next to nothing is irresponsible. You've got to think of your employees, customers and investors. That's my two cents.

 

By the way, participated in a new business meeting with my colleagues in LA. They are damm good!

As the economy sinks and more CEOs and employees lose their jobs, someone needs to ask where all the corporate role models have gone?  I think about the answer to this question often. Have all those most admired, most respected, most responsible, most innovative, most diverse, most wealth-creating, most accountable and most valued companies vanished or are they simply waiting for someone to rewrite the rules for reputation-building today? 

 

Reputation has become deeply entrenched in our global conversation. It was not always that way. Since 2000, reputation mentions have grown 88% in the top tier global media.  Reputation specialists are now in great supply. “Reputation expert” numbers over 25 million hits in search engines compared to 10 years ago when they could be counted on one hand.  Reputation rehab is growing more popular and populated these days. Ousted former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain just entered treatment for handing out nearly $4 billion in bonuses to ex-colleagues and sprucing up his office for $1.2 million. Now defunct Lehman Bros. CEO Richard Fuld never passed the 12 step regimen without an apology and fraudster Bernie Madoff’s detox is beyond hope.  Royal Bank of Scotland’s former bosses were given a 10% discount for at least admitting that the takeover of ABN Amro was a “bad mistake.”

 

As business leaders hit new reputation lows, most pundits or reputation experts are finding it more difficult to name companies to “best of” reputation lists.  So what’s around the corner for reputation repairers looking to mend the good names of companies and CEOs?  Here are three suggestions for rebooting reputation over the next 12-to-18 months:

 

First, as companies continue to announce layoffs, reputations will be built and destroyed on how well job losses are communicated and how fairly the process is handled. In recent years, corporate responsibility had come to mean how workers in emerging markets are treated in the production of company goods and services. In the months ahead, reputations will be built on how transparent and fair leaders are in treating their employees and particularly now, in communicating workforce reductions.  As one recently departed and highly distraught employee posted on www.firedfornow.com:  “On a Wednesday I received an e-mail from my boss ordering me to fire one of my subordinates. I spoke to her on Friday morning - it was painful and horrible. On Friday afternoon my boss fired me! What an a**!!!!!!!!”  In defense, leaders might want to take note of Starbucks’ founder and CEO Howard Schultz’s straightforward employee memo on upcoming layoffs and store closings.

 

Second, reputations built on safety will rise in importance. Consumers, vendors, legislators and other stakeholders will want to know how safe a product is before buying, flying or eating it.  The public will want assurances from companies that they are taking the necessary precautions to safeguard their physical and psychological safety. Investors will want guarantees that that their money is out of harm’s way.  Talent will find ways to determine whether boards have secure risk management systems in place.  Citizens will not stand for government agencies that are lax in their inspections or are in cahoots with industry leaders.  As I see it, safety will replace innovation as one of the most important elements of a good reputation. Risk is out, security is in.

 

Lastly, companies that listen and engage employees and customers online will be tomorrow’s reputation kings and queens.  Our recent research on managing reputations online among global business leaders found that word-of-mouth is an essential reputation ingredient today, ahead of financial performance, talent and corporate responsibility. CEOs are woefully stuck at the Web 1.0 level and need to embrace Web 2.0 social media tools to spread their company’s merits far and wide. Companies that reach out to bloggers and posters with solutions to problems will prevail.  As Dell CEO Michael Dell said after his computers were famously maligned online, “I’d rather have that conversation in my living room than in somebody else’s.”  Giant retailer Best Buy’s bottom-up internal social networking site lets store employees have their own Facebook-like profiles, create wikis, initiate topics of conversation and discuss Best Buy policies.  Management does not always have to go beyond its own four walls to learn first-hand how it is doing and what needs to be fixed.

 

No doubt about it. Reputations will fluctuate radically in 2009 but rebound slowly in 2010. How to manage that rebound is just now becoming clearer.  Reputation experts like me have their work cut out for them.

My good friend and colleague Brendan May heads up our corporate responsibility practice (www.planet2050.com) at Weber Shandwick. He just wrote an article  for Climate Change Corp on why sustainability seems to be surviving the downturn, and even prospering. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to mention here.

 

 

Corporate responsibility is a fundamental element of corporate reputation-building. Reputations may seem to be under water right now but they are in the process of rebuilding the world over from the ground floor up. Don't overlook all the reputation-enhancing activities going on under the radar. Online and offline reputation building never ceases and corporate responsibility has become so integral that it has become like the air we breathe. I was glad that he reminded me that Twitter will play a powerful role in online reputation management (#4) and keeping sustainability honest.

 

As Brendan says: "For those of us who earn our living from sustainability, it’s very risky to assume we are unaffected by the global economic turmoil that graces the front pages and news bulletins on a daily basis. The crisis has implications for the prosperity of the environmental cause, as it does for every product, service or movement. But I would argue that the doomsayers and sceptics who argued that green business would be an early casualty of the credit crunch appear to have been proved wrong." Five reasons from Brendan on why:

1. Yes, they will…There’s little doubt that the political change sweeping the United States partly explains continued corporate attention to issues like climate change. At barely six weeks old, the new administration will take some time to provide a clear sense of what it will and won’t be able to achieve in combating the relentless rise in emissions. There will be many debates and trade-offs ahead. But the ‘chatter’ around the Obama phenomenon is, for now, sufficient for the business community to assume that the old rules will no longer apply, and that scrutiny of their environmental performance will increase rapidly in a way that was inconceivable under the previous regime. 2. Greener is cheaper…There is of course an ironic benefit to the sustainability movement from the current economic caution. Times of austerity and last year’s commodity price volatility have turned many people firmly off the fossil fuel based economy. Combined with the economic stimulus plans being crafted, many of which place the search for new clean technologies at their heart, it is unlikely that people will look back on this global recession as a bad thing for the sustainability movement. 3. Meanwhile, back in Arkansas…Another reason lies in a place called Bentonville, Arkansas, home of course to Walmart’s global HQ. Three years ago, Lee Scott turned the course of that company’s direction. He said all the right things, attracted the right cautious support from NGOs, and certainly secured the attention of the world’s media. Even sceptics conceded that it was a good start, but rightly pointed out the proof of the pudding would be in the eating.  Steadily, Walmart has begun to implement its strategy. The most significant recent development is that all suppliers to Walmart are now being required to step up to the plate on sustainability – rightly so as Walmart cannot possibly reduce and eventually neutralise its environmental footprint without its suppliers doing the same. 4. Tweet tweet…Another reason companies are not abandoning environmental priorities is that they simply cannot afford to take their eye off the ball.  One thing that won’t disappear in a recession is hard-hitting NGO campaigns. Especially now they have the cheap option of social media at their hourly disposal. Indeed, an effective NGO strike on a business is likely to have a far greater impact in a downturn, when there is such intense competition between companies for market share. 5. After the storm…Lastly, the smart company will already be thinking about how it looks when gradually life returns to normal. How wasteful it would be to have to start all over again. Therefore no matter how difficult things look and feel in these long winter months, the smart thing to do is to prepare the recovery strategy, with sustainability at its heart.

When the world returns to financial health, which it surely will, there will be two types of company left: those fit for purpose and those fit for nothing. The fit for purpose company will be an environmental leader, ready to embrace a new world order.

 

   

  The reputation of business leaders continues to fall. We have seen study after study stating that confidence in CEOs is at an all-time low.  A Booz & Company survey (Recession Response: Why Companies are Making the Wrong Moves) from December 2008 among senior managers learned that 40% are unsure that their leaders have a credible plan to deal with the economic crisis. And even more—46%, are uncertain that their leaders can carry out the plan even if they believed in the plan’s foundation.

What surprised me was the perceived slowing of “green” efforts.  Four out of 10 report that “green” and CSR efforts will “significantly” diminish due to the economic downturn. The industries most expected to experience this slow down are transportation and energy. Booz & Co. suggests the following antidotes to this crisis in confidence:

• Get a clear perspective on your competitive set and your position in it
• Put together a plan that is reasonable considering that time and resources are limited. Choose a plan that can make a difference quickly
• Communicate and execute. Earn your stakeholders confidence by communication and getting things done.

Reputations are tightly linked with good communications. How else to get everyone in lockstep in difficult times and especially as workers are distracted by financial concerns and layoffs.

 

 

Interesting tidbit. It would be hard to ignore the influence of CSR or CR (depending on which term you like to use) on corporate reputation. The two go hand-in-hand today and will continue to regardless of the economic slowdown. Companies cannot afford abandon their responsibilities to communities and the environment while they wait for share prices to sort themselves out. However, we can all expect  a tightening of the funds that have supported CR (my preferred term)  programs as 2008 ends and 2009 appears (not soon enough!).  While having a discussion about CR in the office on Monday, I recalled a fact we had uncovered and probably used in a presentation over the past year. We looked at whether there has been an increase in the term “greenwash” or “greenwashing” over the past several years. I do not recall the term being widely used years ago. One of my first recalls of its usage or something close to it was in a speech by BP’s former chairman and CEO Lord John Browne. At one point, I can safely say that I had read every single speech of his since I found his “thought leadership” compelling.  He often made a statement about BP’s global climate change initiatives not being spin or “pr” and he used some sort of “green” term. Back to the interesting tidbit. In the quick research we did at Weber Shandwick, we learned that the term “greenwashing” increased 993% since year 2000 in the global top-tier media. Whereas “greenwashing” appeared less than 50 times in the global media in 2000, it has soared ever since. It’s that viral influence working again….

Del Jones' article in USA Today yesterday on CEO apologies is an excellent review of the reasons why CEOs owe the public an apology about the daunting financial peril we find ourselves in today. Del did an heroic job in pulling together various viewpoints on the state of CEO apologies today. I am quoted in the piece since I have been studying and researching CEO apologies for some time now. The article made me think of a quote I found recently when speaking in Rotterdam on reputation recovery. I had reviewed reports on Shell's town hall meetings held in 50 cities across the U.S.  Shell initiated these meetings to show the human side of big oil and understand why Americans were so openly hostile to the industry. This particular quote stood out in the report I read on these insightful meetings: "If a lack of communications created the problem, maybe it can get us out of it." [Somewhat paraphrased quote] Communications from the top can help us find our way out of the transparency-lessness world we are now living in. Make sure to note the forward-thinking quotes from the founder of Kyocera, Kazuo Inamori. Why 'sorry' isn't in many CEOs' vocabularies anymore By Del Jones, USA TODAY Elected officials in the past have said "I'm sorry" for everything from marital affairs to cross-dressing to corruption, and CEOs tossed around apologies like horseshoes at the company picnic. Not anymore. As the world comes to grips with the biggest financial crisis in seven decades, the mea culpa machine has ground to a halt. Apologies, encouraged in recent years by the crisis-management industry, have dried up — even apologies deployed as a business or political strategy. Legal concerns weigh heavily on any words that might be construed as an admission of guilt. But also weighing heavily is the silence from politicians, regulators and past and present CEOs at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Bear Stearns, Countrywide Financial, Merrill Lynch and Washington Mutual. It's been clear for weeks that the financial crisis has dammed the free flow of credit. But with each passing day, it's also appears that the crisis has likewise dammed the free flow of taking responsibility. When Lehman Bros. CEO Richard Fuld testified on Capitol Hill this month, members of Congress grilled him to own up. Fuld said he takes full responsibility for his decisions, that he "felt horrible about it," but that the largest bankruptcy in history was due to circumstances beyond his control. Likewise, a trio of former AIG chief executives — Hank Greenberg, Martin Sullivan and Robert Willumstad — deflected blame in oral and written testimony to Congress. Finger-pointers in Congress have found cover in public opinion polls that show most people blame CEOs for the crisis. But there is blame to go around, with Democrats choosing to ignore warnings about the possible implosion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Republicans supporting less regulation, says Harvard leadership expert Barbara Kellerman, who wrote a 2006 article in the Harvard Business Review titled, "When Should a Leader Apologize — and When Not?" The absence of apologies has fed widespread outrage. Even CEOs in other industries are upset that they must now negotiate their companies through what appears to be an inevitable recession. While few CEOs in the USA have been outwardly critical of their counterparts in the financial sector, the founder and chairman emeritus of Kyocera, an electronics giant in Japan — where there is a culture of admitting mistakes — says what others may be thinking. CEOs who had a hand in the mess "should acknowledge their role and apologize, unreservedly, to their shareholders, stakeholders and the U.S. taxpayers," Kazuo Inamori told USA TODAY through an interpreter. "They should sincerely reflect on their own management methods. They were too preoccupied with their own desires. They should acknowledge their own faults and, yes, apologize." However, no one in the U.S. believes they can get to the top by falling on their swords, says Dan McGinn, CEO of TMG Strategies, a public relations firm that counsels companies on threats to their reputations. McGinn says his personal belief is that there is more room for humility and honesty than most executives realize, and that the public hungers for candor and authenticity. Apologies, McGinn says, are wrongly perceived as a sign of weakness. Yet, in the years before the crisis, apologies had become common, almost a sport, and examples can be found on YouTube from everyone from Don Imus to Jesse Jackson to Mel Gibson to Seinfeld's Michael Richards, to Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money. Lawyers recommend against admitting wrongdoing, but companies had come to discount that advice to save reputations and get past bad news. In 2004, professors from the University of Michigan and Stanford University found that companies that accepted blame for poor performance in annual reports were more likely to outperform the market the following year. Companies have found that heart-felt apologies can decrease the likelihood of lawsuits if they're well crafted and don't come off as "Sorry I got caught," but express regret, assume responsibility and map out a plan to avoid repeating the offense, says Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist at public relations firm Weber Shandwick and a longtime student of apologies in crisis management. Great apologies of the past Past corporate apologies have come from JetBlue, Amazon, Nielsen, Seagate Technology, Sun Microsystems, Southwest Airlines, Texaco, Procter & Gamble, United Airlines, Ford Motor, Toshiba, Merck, Mattel, Taco Bell and Nike. Even Hank Paulson, now Treasury secretary and a key player in the global attempt at economic resuscitation, apologized to employees in 2003 when he was CEO of Goldman Sachs for implying that most of them were irrelevant to the firm's success. Steve Jobs issued an apology when Apple sold iPhones to its most eager customers for $599, then slashed the price two months later to $399. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey apologized for writing anonymous posts on financial message boards. Steve Hughes, the former CEO of tea-maker Celestial Seasonings, once wrote a letter of apology in the Boulder, Colo., Daily Camera for poisoning prairie dogs on company property. Those may have seemed like bad deeds at the time, but they pale compared with the pink slips about to be distributed as a result of the credit crunch. The clock can't be turned back, but a few sincere "I deeply regrets," would help shift focus from what has happened to what needs to happen next, Gaines-Ross says. A 2006 Weber Shandwick study found that apologies had become so commonplace that their ability to allay public concern may be eroding. Even so, "CEOs should realize that an apology is not a sign of weakness, but an act of strength," Gaines-Ross says. Not sorry, and proud of it Golden Gate University psychologist Kit Yarrow says both CEOs and elected officials operate in dog-eat-dog worlds where strength is rewarded and those with self doubt and regret don't make it to the top. "It's entirely possible that these individuals haven't internalized that they've made mistakes and therefore, don't feel responsible," Yarrow says. "Many of the folks involved have trained themselves to avoid introspection and second-guessing. It gives you a thick skin and a sense of superiority that shields you from caring what people think of you. And if you don't care what people think, you certainly wouldn't feel the need to apologize." Other dynamics may be at play. The magnitude of the crisis has leaders frightened into taking the Martha Stewart/Pete Rose path of stubborn denial, which may have helped put one in prison and blocked the other from baseball's Hall of Fame. The bigger the injury, the longer the wait. By the time Bridgestone CEO Masatoshi Ono apologized to the Senate Commerce Committee in 2000 for faulty tires, four years had passed since the problem first appeared and the Bridgestone/Firestone incident had become a case study in how not to handle a crisis. Ono retired shortly afterward. In 1995, Helge Wehmeier, then CEO of Bayer U.S., expressed deep regret on behalf of Bayer's original parent company, I.G. Farbenindustrie, for its having been complicit in the Holocaust. Ten years later, then-CEO of Wachovia Ken Thompson apologized that two companies the bank acquired had owned slaves. A key reason for the sudden lack of apologies may be that there is so much cover afforded. The financial problem is complex, and culprits abound, Kellerman says. "When the waters are this muddy, it's difficult to assign blame," Kellerman says. She calls such cover "the blessing of many hands," saying it allows those people and institutions responsible to hide, or even go on the offense and blame others. "Individuals can ultimately convince themselves that they did what anyone would do in the same situation," Yarrow says. "With so many players, it's easy to shift blame. Under stress, the mind finds ways to protect itself from truths that can damage a positive self-image." Silence is golden during litigation The strongest argument for silence may be the courtroom. Grand jury investigations have begun, Fuld and other executives have received subpoenas, and the standard advice of criminal defense lawyers is to say nothing, says Columbia law professor John Coffee. "Everyone remembers that six months after the fall of Enron and WorldCom, indictments began to come down, and it rained indictments for the next year," he says. "Those who accept responsibility might become the lightning rod that attracts the first bolt of lightning from the prosecutors." "After two decades of class-action litigation, most general counsels will caution their CEOs against apologizing until the facts are thoroughly investigated and liabilities are determined," McGinn says. "This is in conflict, of course, with the expectations of the media and the public." There is also a fresh crop of leaders running companies most often implicated in the crisis, which has so far allowed old leaders to step into the shadows. Edward Liddy replaced Willumstad at AIG, Herbert Allison replaced Dan Mudd at Fannie Mae, and David Moffett replaced Richard Syron at Freddie Mac, all last month. "Time is running out for apologies to be effective," Gaines-Ross says. "If a few CEOs act contrite and take action, shareholders might breathe a sigh of relief and move on." Wrongdoers will have cover only for so long, and some CEOs and politicians eventually will be identified as key culprits, Kellerman says. She predicts they will likely be exposed by shareholder activists and Internet bloggers. Few hold hope of apologies from elected officials, who don't have to protect the viability of a company and have only their own personal reputations to defend. Congressional apologies often require smoking guns and more often involve sexual scandal than acts of public harm. In Congress, harmful actions are blamed on others, Gaines-Ross says. "It's hard for most of us to imagine how someone could be responsible for such damage and loss to others and not feel an urgent need to apologize," psychologist Yarrow says. "Obviously some of those investment bankers and politicians aren't like the rest of us." "I think that the heavens, or natural common wisdom, may be suggesting that we try to live more down-to-earth and honest lives, " says Kyocera's Inamori, who is a Zen Buddhist priest. He says profit is society's reward for serving its interests. "In order to restore and revitalize capitalism, it is crucial that business executives regain this attitude," Inamori says.  

We released a timely survey today. We surveyed employed Americans about the financial upheaval and asked them how satisfied they are with their leadership's communications. In short, we learned that working Americans are not hearing enough from senior leaders about the global financial crisis. In fact, a huge 70% expect the current economic problems in the U.S. is going to have a negative impact on the company they work for over the next year. Of those, 26% believe their company will have lay offs and 62% said their company will have trouble meeting goals. These survey findings (conducted with KRC Research) highlight a genuine leadership deficit! A hefty 71% of people felt that their company's leadership should be communicating more about current economic problems, and 54% have not heard from company leaders at all on the impact of the financial crisis on their company.  By comparison, 74% said that they had heard colleagues and co-workers talking about the issue. If employees are discussing the implications for them of the financial crisis online, at the water cooler or in the halls, you can bet that some of the information swirling around is misleading and inaccurate. This is a perfect breeding ground for rumors and gossip. During times of uncertainty such as these, employees are thirsty for news and information. Now is the time for CEOs to speak up and speak out. Send out emails, hold town halls, start an internal blog, walk the halls, produce a podcast or webcast and even try old-fashioned voice mail if you must.  The absence of leadership communications is deafening.

So much to write about this week.  Reputation continues to astound me as it seems to be the thread that weaves itself through the fabric of the economic meltdown, absence of leadership and communications standstill plaguing organizations. Several items caught my eye this week.

• Industry Reputation: A WSJ/NBC News poll reported that a mere 10% of Americans have confidence in the financial industry. This compares to 36% who said this they had confidence in the sector in 2000. This in an industry in peril unless someone speaks up and out.
• Political Reputation: Love the fact that the Economist is giving my brethren around the world a chance to vote in the U.S. presidential election. Everyone can now vote for Obama or McCain at www.economist.com/vote 2008. This venerable magazine is also providing a global electoral map and will announce results right before November 4th. The voting deadline is November 1st so please cast your vote!
• CEO Reputation: Learned that the Chairman of Chinese computer-maker  Lenovo, Yang Yuanquing, moved to North Carolina to better understand American culture and be better equipped to integrate American and Chinese colleagues. Truly deserves an A for effort.
• Country Reputation: 62 companies from emerging markets populate the Fortune 500. Most of these companies come from the BRIC countries and this number is double what it was in 2003 when 31 emerging market companies made it to the popular list.
• Legal Reputation Recovery:  Attorney Mark MacDougall of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld has an expertise in “reputation recovery.”  Caught my attention since that is an expertise that I have written about extensively. MacDougall  ferrets out false allegations or lies and makes them  go away.  His investigatory work  (“runs what is arguable the world’s best fact-checking department, one that would put The New Yorker to shame”) is widely known. He is quoted by writer Seth Hettena in The American Lawyer as saying: “Our job is to kill the false story. Not the bad story, which is what a PR guy does.” If you are looking for a lawyer, he might be your guy.
• Buffet’s Reputation: The Economist had an interesting sentence in an article on Warren Buffet’s rescue of Goldman Sachs and GE by investing billions in the companies during the financial meltdown. “Indeed, were he not a philanthropist, committed to giving away his billions, the tough terms he has negotiated with both firms might have prompted accusations that he is taking advantage of the desperate.”  As Sarah Palin would say, You Betcha.
• Political Leadership  Reputation: Did you know that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad has a blog?  That Putin is launching a new web site for Russia, www.premier.gov.ru .

On to the next week......

Now that I am back in the USA, I keep thinking about the recurrent questions I received during my many media interviews and internal staff Q&A while visiting Shanghai and Beijing. I was repeatedly asked my opinion about what I thought of companies and organizations who were not donating the proper amount of money for the Sichuan earthquake victims. Having read everything I could before arriving in China, I did not really come across anything that fully prepared me for the intensity surrounding this topic. Although I had an inkling that this was simmering because a journalist alluded to it before I arrived, I did not appreciate how much attention was being paid by the Chinese people to which companies had given in earthquake assistance. In fact, company individuals were often asked to publicly disclose the amount they had given in relief and they were not sure what the right amount should be. When this topic came up, the story of the CEO of a large real estate company also surfaced. Apparently the CEO was among the first to donate money and discuss his contribution on his blog. However, many people believed that the CEO had erred by not giving enough and stained his reputation. The CEO apologized under public pressure and announced he was contributing more to the natural disaster. It seems that people were aware of a list of the top 20 company donors, multinationals and non-multinationals alike. I can’t recall the U.S. media covering who did not give funds during Hurricane Katrina. Instead I tend to recall the companies that did the right thing, not necessarily only financially but in kind provisions and volunteerism. Obviously a very interesting difference between Eastern and Western cultures when it comes to disaster relief and understanding of what corporate responsibility means. This experience made me realize how important it is to see the world through the eyes of different cultures and to recognize the power of civil society upon corporate behavior. The pressure from employees and the community were dramatically driving corporate giving. I was also asked twice in Beijing what would happen if an earthquake occurred during the Olympics in August. This question reminded me of how I felt after the terrorist attack on in New York on September 11th which I witnessed up close. After 9-11, barely a day went by for nearly two years that I did not think that another attack was imminent in New York. For that very reason, I did not regard the question as strange although now that several years have passed, I do not think about it constantly. In response to that question, I believe that the Chinese government is as prepared as any country and learned a lot over the past six months to effectively handle such a crisis if it should strike. Hopefully the Olympics will be smooth sailing and triumphant for all.