The world right now seems shrouded in such incredible murk it’s a wonder any of us can put a foot in front of the other. Every new day, every new Anderson Cooper utterance, every new splash of 72-point newsprint ink brings fresh reason for despair. The aftershocks of a devastating earthquake on a pristine strip of humanity in the South Pacific. The ravings of a despot in northern Africa intent on taking a country...
It’s a win-win-win. The consumer gets a new toy, its manufacturer gets a sale, an affiliated charity gets a shot to the arm. And those are just the tangibles. Cause-related marketing (CRM) isn’t a new idea. The first notable initiative on this front was likely an American Express campaign from the early 1980s that dedicated a portion of each purchase toward a program to restore the Statue of Liberty. Even earlier,...
Students attending business school in India these days are learning as much about balanced budgets as they are about balanced psyches. As tapped-in educators in this part of the world acknowledge the emerging importance of spirituality in the corporate landscape, the pursuit of individuality and competition is giving over to one inspired by teamwork, cooperation and even service. In turn, the curricula in India’s...
A little over a decade ago, some leading American academics endeavored to identify the relationship between a company’s spiritual practices and its corporate success. A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America: A Hard Look at Spirituality, Religion, and Values in the Workplace, was a groundbreaking report that revealed that organizations that embrace spirituality actually do better than those that don’t. Indeed, a...
The time of year is well upon us now. Holiday parties, in all their reckless, unpredictable glory, spread beneath our feet like poinsettia leaves, loosed from their stems thanks to a stumbling encounter by someone in accounting who’d been too much into the rum punch. Managing their volatile presence inside of an otherwise orderly office environment is a trick, to be sure. No time of the year, after all, issues a...