40+ Images and captions explaining a brief history of 500 years of CSR and Corporate Sustainability in pictures. A presentation used at Nottingham University Business School on March 13 2013.
4. Newspapers of the 1720s were
similar to UK tabloids today:
Reporting gossip and rumour
as well as trade numbers.
Journalistic standards were low.
Have we come full circle today?
8. Cadbury's Bourneville site attempted to
improve worker lives, and was reported
on in UK media in 19th Century
9. Ida Tarbell, the original “muck raker”
journalist, blew the lid on the
monopolistic / oligopolistic strategies of
the Rockefellers.
This lead to the era of “Trust Busting”
around the turn of the 20th Century, and
changed how Governments looked at
markets and controls forever….
10. Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”
(1906) investigated labour
conditions in Chicago
Slaughter houses.
The book helped create a
groundswell of public
indignation about worker
exploitation.
As a result of his campaigning
journalism and incidents such
factory fires, some of the first
modern health and safety
legislation – and enforcement
– came about in early 20th
Century USA.
11.
12. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book created a
media storm and societal debate about
what new “miracle” chemicals may be
doing to the environment.
Silent Spring is cited by academics and
environmentalists as a turning point in
how citizens began to think about the
downsides of rapid industrial
development and pesticide use (DDT).
13. Friedman Picture
Friedman’s 1970 New York Times
Magazine essay on the “business of
business” is still highly controversial,
and still debated today…
14. Ralph Nader was a major
campaigning force in the 1960s
and 1970s.
His investigation into the “cost
benefit” analyses undertaken by
US automarkers when considering
the recall of cars they knew may
explode, was a seminal moment
for the car industry, for media
coverage, law suits and regulators.
15. Barry Commoner, the first
environmentalist to be featured
on the cover of a best selling
magazine?
Earth Day 1970 was a major
media moment.
Concerns about chemicals, wars,
resources, agricultural
productivity and population
growth were front page news in
the early 1970s.
23. Nike: The accidental poster child of
globalisation and it’s negatives.
The company, along with Gap and a
few others, became an iconic symbol
of the 1990’s anti-globalisation
movement.
Even though university professors
earned more in its factories than they
did in teaching, the company became
a symbol of exploitation and uncaring
capitalism.
To this day, the media loves nothing
better than a big brand sweatshop or
child labour story.
Today Nike leads the apparel industry
in sustainability, partly as a result.
24. Brent Spar Oil Storage
Plaftform, 1995.
Shell wanted to dump it at
sea. Greenpeace objected
over precedent setting.
Left, Shell water cannons
versus Greenpeace
inflatables.
Shell stood no chance in the
court of public opinion.
A media storm ensured.
Shell struggled to hire
research chemists for some
years afterwards.
25. Also in 1995-96, Nigeria’s
Sani Abacha executes
activist Ken Saro-wiwa.
Shell is blamed. The
media jumps on board. A
Seminal period for CSR.
26. Andrew Fastow, Enron CFO. Enron went
from being 7th largest Fortune 100
company to bankruptcy in months
during 2001. Fortune magazine built up
Enron, then tore it down when they
realised they had been duped.
27. The early “noughties” saw China
rise, and so did the sweatshop stories
In the press, and reputational risks for
companies.
28.
29. The first run on a
British bank in decades
was fuelled by a media
storm in 2007.