Corporate sustainability has gone mainstream, and many companies have taken meaningful steps to improve their own environmental performance. But while corporate political actions such as lobbying can have a greater impact on environmental quality, they are ignored in most current sustainability metrics. It is time for these metrics to be expanded to critically assess firms based on the sustainability impacts of their public policy positions. To enable such assessments, firms must become as transparent about their corporate political responsibility (CPR) as their corporate social responsibility (CSR). For their part, rating systems must demand such information from firms and include evaluations of corporate political activity in their assessments of corporate environmental responsibility.
Once each decade, California Management Review (CMR) publishes a special issue that features research by faculty at the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley. Our 40th anniversary issue, published 20 years ago, highlighted research on Knowledge Management. CMR's 50th anniversary issue featured cutting-edge research on Innovation. In our 60th anniversary issue, we present new research that focuses on Leadership.
In recent years, the idea of conscious capitalism has emerged as an important alternative approach to the problems confronting American capitalism. Embraced by a number of corporations and prominent business leaders, it represents a new strategy for reconciling business, social, and environmental objectives. While this movement is an inspiring one and worthy of admiration, we believe the assumptions that underlie it suffer from a number of important limitations that make it unlikely for the movement to achieve the ambitious promises of its proponents. In fact, it is often difficult to do well by doing good, and few firms have been able to sustain superior social performance over the long run. Moreover, reconciling the interests of all the firm's stakeholders is often hard to achieve in practice. Most important, the adherents of conscious capitalism overlook the critical role that governments must play in reconciling corporate interests with broader public objectives.
Our annual survey of ideas and trends that will make an impact on business: Stan Stalnaker heralds a peer-to-peer economy in which consumers become consumer-producers. Tamara J. Erickson dissects the expectations of Gen Y workers. Dr. Jerome Groopman writes a prescription for avoiding misdiagnoses in decision making. Michael Sheehan warns not to resort to the tools of competition when it's really opposition that threatens your company. John J. Medina conceives of a brain-friendly workplace that applies modern science to daily performance. Dan Ariely studies the minds of "honest" people when they cheat. Paul Root Wolpe and Daniel D. Langleben share truths about technologically sophisticated lie detection. Scott Berinato shines a light on the cybercrime service economy. Mark Kuznicki, Eli Singer, and Jay Goldman showcase Toronto, where a technology-driven event led to real social change. John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas argue that online games are preparing the twenty-first-century workforce. Jane McGonigal calls alternate reality games the promising new operating systems for real-world business. Miklos Sarvary mines the history of broadcasting for wisdom about competing in the metaverses of the internet. Judith Donath asks how true to yourself you'll be in the virtual world. Jan Chipchase surveys the soon-to-be-charted territory of metadata trails. Lew McCreary points a finger at people who blame technology for their bad behavior. Jaime Lerner sees the city of the future in a turtle's shell. David Vogel catalogs the advantages of socially responsible lobbying. George Pohle lets the numbers prove the mass-market promise of China's second-tier cities. Aamir A. Rehman and S. Nazim Ali discuss the boom in sharia-compliant finance. Michael J. Mauboussin identifies the shrinking domain in which experts are the best problem solvers. Garrett Gruener reveals his list of sustainable and unsustainable trends.