Timberland Explains CSR the Right Way

It's taken me a while to post, but now we're in business. Two items of note for the week:

The Right Way to do CSR
Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz appeared on the Colbert Report last night and, usual hilarious banter aside, gave fantastic insight into the mindset of a company that does corporate social responsibility right. His main message was simple, and something that was nice to see the head of a publicly-traded company say: commerce and justice don't have to be two different ideas; that companies have a responsibility to deliver both profits for their shareholders and be responsible environmental citizens. He also went on to say that, "a free market can be part of a solution that's broader than just delivering this quarter's earnings."

This is an essential idea in corporate social responsibility that is not often communicated enough. Too often, profits and responsibility are separated, and a fundamental principle of CSR is that the two are tied together, not mutually exclusive.

And Some Crisis
In other news, Comair responded to the report today that flight 5283, their daily trip from JFK to Washington Reagan, is the country's most delayed flight. Despite the possible urge to try to let this report run its course and not respond, Comair explained in an interview that they were disappointed with their performance, working to solve the issue and pointed to a growing problem with air congestion in the northeast. They also referenced a record number of passengers at New York's airports. The result was that the rest of the piece shifted focus to the the worsening congestion, alleviating some of the fault placed on Comair and saving them from a potentially more harmful story.

Comair's response shows that addressing the bad news head on, admitting fault and citing credible reasons why a situation occured, rather than trying to avoid the issue (as so many companies do), can lessen the damage caused by a story about a problem you're already working to solve.