Please note that this page is no longer being updated.  Visit the new What's New page to learn more about Article 13 and our work in the corporate social responsibiliy arena.

New…

CBI CSR case studies! CBI and Article 13 continue to profile companies who are doing innovative work in CSR…A new batch of case studies is now live on the site, including British Airways, Ford, O2 and Rio Tinto plc...

In this  update, we revisit a well-established idea that never seems to lose its resonance or its controversy: evolution.  What can the theory first suggested by Charles Darwin in 1859 teach us about corporate social responsibility and how can businesses survive and thrive today?  Read our CSR expert view "Evolution - still a world changing idea" to find out more…

Underpinning all our reflections this month is the issue of labour rights, the topic that Article 13 has been reviewing as a signatory to the UN Global Compact.  How can we manage and enable people in the future if we don’t know what changes are afoot?  Environmental and social trend watching is vital to planning for the future.

Finally, our CSR best practice case studies highlight leading practice in the public and private sector.  Welsh Water and WWF have both broken their cycles of ‘business as usual’.  Both have learnt, survived and now thrive.

In our briefing papers we aim to widen the range of resources that you would normally use in your work.  “Evolution – sources of learning and metaphor” whirls through a range of accessible and fascinating writings on evolution to see where biology and science can offer insights for business.  We also pick up on the idea that organisational learning is core to organisational survival and review some of the recent work from one of the leading thinkers on organisations, learning and sustainability, Peter Senge of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Vote now!
Do you think that today's successful businesses will...?  What evolutionary stance will you take where business is concerned?

Don’t miss out!  Visit Our publications to order your copy of Article 13’s groundbreaking CSR research, including our recent investigation into the role of business in addressing the issues of climate change and poverty.

Making it practical: In each new update, we make the link between the issues covered and the implications they might have for your organisation.  Visit this page to find out what the key issues may be for you, and how Article 13 has addressed similar issues with our clients.

Follow up...

Over the last year, Article 13 have been using our research-based website to explore the different trends challenging the way that organisations can do responsible business.  We called the series “breaking the cycle” and with each update we posed a question asking readers to “Vote Now!”

The responses to our on-line polls give us an interesting barometer of our readers’ and clients’ views.  We don’t make any claims that the poll is scientific or statistically valid – but the results are worth feeding back to you.

In “IT: Feel the Force”, readers were evenly divided between believing that IT could help companies deliver products and services using less materials and more customer consultation, or IT is simply a tool and its effect depends on the intent of its users.  Only a small minority were worried that IT is slowly eroding recent advances in corporate citizenship by increasing surveillance, reducing privacy and threatening innovation by undermining creativity.

But in our last update on “Evolution, still a world changing idea”, you overwhelmingly felt that today’s successful businesses will need to monitor the environment and social conditions and ensure they evolve to fit.  It won’t be an automatic process, and survival is not automatic. 

Don’t forget to register your views on this month’s website topic: Vote Now!

Click on any of the orange links below to explore what's new on the site:

© Article 13