Understanding this, Corporate Knights set out nine years ago to highlight which programs are leading the pack within Canada. We looked south of the border to the Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking conducted by the Aspen Institute, which had established criteria rewarding schools for emphasizing social responsibility, environmental sustainability and community engagement through institutional support, student initiatives and coursework. Along with the help of an advisory panel of experts, the Knight Schools Ranking was launched.

When Corporate Knights first began ranking Canadian MBA programs in 2003, we received a spectrum of responses from school administrators. Despite pockets of academic enthusiasm, the rising momentum for corporate social responsibility in business circles had yet to appear in the classroom in a systemic manner. Some were pleased to showcase individual programs, while others had little idea what their competitors and colleagues were focusing on. After receiving the survey, one school administrator even exclaimed, “You mean there is stuff (on sustainability) being done out there?” We understood then there was work to do.

The original MBA survey has been broadened to evaluate disciplines not typically associated with the concepts surrounding sustainability, including law schools, teachers colleges, industrial design programs, public policy schools and others. We will return to evaluating these disciplines in future years, but decided in 2012 to narrow the focus to MBA and engineering programs. The Canadian corporations most successful at displaying good corporate citizenship have done so largely due to the vision of the executives running the company. With 63 per cent of the executives for the top 10 TSX-traded companies by market capitalization having earned either an MBA or an engineering degree, determining the efficacy of the education tomorrow’s business leaders are receiving in sustainability became the goal of this year’s survey.

MBA Programs

The results show how polarized business programs remain on the subject of sustainability. Only six MBA programs received a grade above 50 per cent, and these schools were located in four different provinces, showing no regional superiority. The Schulich School of Business at York University earned the top mark of 86 per cent, receiving a high grade in all three evaluated categories that continues a nine-year reign on top of our rankings.

The Master of Environment and Business (MEB) program at the University of Waterloo placed second. We continue to rank the program, despite it not representing a traditional MBA, as it presents the comprehensive fusion of business and environment we wish to encourage. Prominence is given to sustainability from the onset of the program, with students brought in two weeks before classes begin for an orientation that includes seminars on “the business case for sustainability.” The John Molson School of Business at Concordia University placed third, allowing students to specialize in numerous categories: corporate governance and business ethics; business sustainability and environmental management; or community development.

With the United Nations celebrating 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives, we also looked into which MBA programs champion cooperative business management as an alternative to a more traditional business structure. L’Université du Québec à Montréal, which came in seventh overall, was the only faculty presenting a multifaceted approach – offering a specialization in cooperatives and social organizations, emphasizing cooperatives management during orientation activities and maintaining an endowed faculty chair on the subject.

Despite this impressive performance by the top-ranked schools, the average grade for MBA programs remained below 30 per cent. Improvements are needed most in the institutional support and coursework sections. In particular, greater opportunities for students to partake in sustainability-oriented internships and consulting programs are needed; more than 50 per cent of programs failed to provide any. A serious commitment to sustainability also needs to be evident in coursework, as few business schools include sustainability-themed courses in their core curriculum; 34 per cent failed to include any, with another 31 per cent only offering a “professional ethics” course.

Engineering Programs

The survey produced similar divisions among engineering schools, with just eight ranking above 50 per cent. The University of Toronto’s engineering program received the top grade of 72 per cent, powered by a perfect grade in the student participation section and a 96 per cent score for institutional support.

The University of Western Ontario was second, guaranteeing students a number of streams entirely dedicated to social and/or environmental impact management: green process engineering, environmental engineering, and biochemical and environmental engineering, among others. L’Université Laval came third, providing the students with multiple endowed faculty chairs specializing in a variety of topics including materials for renewable energy, modelling for water quality and planning sustainable forest value networks. It also maintains several institutes and research centres that focus on issues related to social and environmental impact management.

One notable addition to the list is the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC), which is in the process of expanding its engineering faculty to keep up with the extensive economic development and resource extraction efforts occurring in B.C.’s north. It offers a joint degree in environmental engineering with the University of British Columbia, helping UNBC land an overall ranking of eighth, supported by top marks in both required and elective courses dedicated to social or environmental impact management.

The lack of sustainability education in engineering faculties lies mainly in the coursework and curriculum offered. Students are given few opportunities to focus on pertinent subjects, with only 43 per cent of schools providing relevant specializations. Joint degrees suffer a similar fate, despite their potential for improving the social and environmental sensitivity of the Canadian engineering profession; 70 per cent of schools failed to provide any. The number of mandatory courses is also scant, with just six schools achieving a perfect score in this category by offering at least five relevant and required courses.

Taking the fork in the road

There are hopeful signs that the poorest performing programs in both MBA and engineering programs, which still comprise the majority of faculties in Canada, are growing more comfortable with the notion of sustainability, even if they have not yet moved to integrate theory into their curriculums.

Student initiatives such as Engineers Without Borders, Environmental Chemists and Net Impact not only provide students with experience-based learning, but also demonstrate their overwhelming desire for a change in curriculum. Many professors are engaged in environmental or social research initiatives – despite a lack of significant faculty support – because they understand the underlying trends in the business and engineering communities. They are waiting for a transfer of these resources to formal training, which their respective faculties have yet to do.

We’re waiting, too.

To collect information for the 2012 ranking, surveys were distributed to programs selected for evaluation. If a school did not complete the survey, CK used public information to collect data, unless a specific request for exclusion – made by several MBA schools, including the Richard Ivey School of Business – was received. The survey was used to collect pertinent information within the timeframe of September 2011-August 2012.

Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

The post A higher degree of sustainability appeared first on Corporate Knights.

CK: Our magazine does an annual ranking of MBA schools in Canada by measuring the degree to which sustainability is integrated into their respective curriculums. It’s an insightful, but also challenging exercise given the different approaches schools take. What does the landscape look like in your view?

MILSTEIN: There’s no single standard for what ought to be done. You have standalone programs like Presidio Graduate School or Bainbridge Graduate Institute that focus entirely on sustainable management. You have programs at Michigan, Yale and Duke (with similar approaches), and you’ve got programs like ours and Berkeley’s where you have substantial content in sustainability offered in different ways. There’s a real variety out there.

CK: This must create some confusion, in terms of what both students and faculty are looking for.

MILSTEIN: One of the challenges to the area is that sustainability itself is a term that can have a lot of meanings. The challenge academically for schools that want to develop a program is, do they really know what they want to develop? They can cover labour issues, cleantech, impact investing – there are so many different terminologies now that can apply. And at the end of the day you need faculty members and staff who are going to put programs together. Part of the struggle I’ve watched is people never being clear on what they want a program to focus on.

CK: How would you categorize the approaches or learning opportunities?

MILSTEIN: From our perspective at Cornell, we think the business and sustainability space is divided into three main content areas. (One is) environmental management, where you define sustainability as something more akin to a regulatory problem. You can follow regulations or try to influence regulations as they’re played out. How are (regulations) going to impact your operations, the materials you use and the design of your products? A second area that’s gained a lot of currency in the last 10 years is corporate social responsibility. CSR includes environmental management but also sustainability as public opinion. The third component is what I call sustainability enterprise, and that’s looking at sustainability as a business opportunity. If (the drivers behind sustainability) are a long-lasting and chronic problem, what are the businesses and technologies and products we can commercialize around it? Our program is focused on that last piece, emphasizing sustainable enterprise. Our students want to lead a company, know what to invest in, know what to commercialize. Here you’re focused on business growth opportunities, and that’s very different than many programs focused on ethics or CSR.

CK: So a school and prospective students really need to know what they want their strengths to be.

MILSTEIN: In my mind, most programs have not thought this stuff out, and that’s a problem for the space. The dynamic you end up with inside programs is you have a lot of committees, people making decisions about courses, and you’re going to have a group of faculty of different areas weighing in on whether that makes sense for the school.

CK: What’s the job market today for MBA graduates drawn to the business of sustainability?

MILSTEIN: There are plenty of jobs for folks in the environmental management domain, but our MBAs don’t want those. There are probably not enough CSR jobs in the world to satisfy the demand of our business graduate students. Sustainable enterprise jobs are a little bit trickier. Sometimes it means you’re just going after a normal straight-line job, but we’ve armed our students with a deeper knowledge of what those sustainable opportunities are. A lot of our graduates end up taking straight-line jobs in consulting or Wall Street or consumer products firms. They’re getting into those roles and applying a different lens to problems and building solutions that will tap into sustainability without making it a front-and-centre goal of what they’re trying to accomplish.

CK: Should sustainability continue to be its own silo within the MBA curriculum or more broadly integrated across entire MBA programs?

MILSTEIN: If you go back 20 years, people were arguing it’s a complex multidisciplinary subject and you can’t compartmentalize it; that it has to be diffused among everything. Getting that in practice has been tricky. What’s the right answer? We have this debate internally. Must you have sustainability in the core? On the one hand, I say, it would make a lot of sense to have a sustainability course in the core. Then again, I don’t want it as its own standalone subject and I want to integrate it across all the courses. I think it’s about thinking through how a program is structured, what students want to do, what kind of decisions do they want to participate in, and how do we make sure we’ve prepared them for that. What we’re saying is we shouldn’t be graduating anybody from the Cornell program who doesn’t have a fundamental understanding of what the sustainability domain looks like, what their options are, and how they can move forward on different decisions.

CK: Are more students seeking sustainability in their business school studies? Are there a growing number of applicants in this area?

MILSTEIN: I don’t have enough information to say conclusively across the board there’s growth. I know what’s going on in our school. In 2004 we had only a handful of students. Now we grapple with the fact that half our (business school) applicants are citing our program as the reason they applied to Cornell. That’s pretty big growth for us. When I talk to colleagues, they tell me those are big numbers for a program or content area.

CK: Is the growing interest a generational thing?

MILSTEIN: Look at the trend. The millennials are coming up. Those students coming to our programs, on average 27 or 28 years old, have been socialized on social and environmental issues from a very early age in a way we never were. They are more involved in some ways – volunteering is something they grew up with. Environmental consciousness is something they grew up with. There is a shift in the interests that students have. Now, we have no lack of people who want to get an MBA and just go to Wall Street and make as much money as they can. But increasingly there are people who are concerned about social issues, concerned about environmental issues, and believe the private sector should have a role to play in addressing these issues. That’s a trend that’s growing and it’s not going to go away anytime soon. There are not good, viable solutions to how we sort out growing to a population of nine billion or more, and supporting a population of that size. We’re seeing it even now from the NGO community. They are turning to entities like us, turning to our students, and explaining how they’ve been working on these problems for decades and things are only getting worse; that they’d like to work increasingly with the private sector.

CK: So more students want their livelihood to be a reflection of who they are and the values they hold?

MILSTEIN: People want to demonstrate they work for places that care and are involved. When we walk into an interview room now, people (applicants) are asking us questions about social problems, how we can reconcile products in the marketplace with these other problems we face. It is something companies themselves recognize has come to their doorstep in a large way, which is a big contrast to about eight years ago. HR people eight years ago said sustainability is important but what does it have to do with HR? Now they say it’s important to them – if companies don’t demonstrate they’re good corporate citizens they can lose strong candidates right off the bat.

Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

The post Green thinking picking up steam in MBA programs appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The first CK Knight Schools report was in 2003, with the objective “…to shine a light on individuals in business schools across Canada who are working to push the social responsibility, environmentally sustainable and community engagement agendas forward.” Nine reports have been completed to date, all of which produce a ranking of university programs according to how well they integrate sustainability into their ucrriculum and educational atmosphere. Analysis of MBA degree programs remain central to the ranking, but over the years many degree programs (and disciplines) have been evaluated, including: law, engineering, urban planning, architecture, journalism, public policy and public administration, industrial design, teacher’s education, and actuarial science. This year, in the 9th Knight Schools Ranking, we focus on MBA business programs, along with undergraduate Engineering programs.

Research Methodology

The Knights Schools methodology is based on the Beyond Grey Pinstripes Report, which is published every two years by the Aspen Institute. The institutes evaluate MBA programs across the globe for social, ethical and environmental stewardship using two metrics: required and elective courses, and faculty research. CK has taken this methodology and expanded it in a number of ways. First, we evaluate MBA business programs, as we believe it is critical to root ideas of sustainability within students, future managers, at the start of their training. We also evaluated student-led initiatives on top of the two metrics used, as initial research told us taht this is a hotbed of innovation and sustainability activities. This is where we started in 2003, evaluating programs under four broad categories: Institutional (25%), Faculty Research (20%), Student-Led Initiaties (15%) and Course Work (40%).

Fast-forward to the 2012 Knight Schools ranking. Each year, slight modifications were made to improve and streamline our analysis. In a broad sense, the main difference from 2003 is that programs were evaluated in three categories, as ‘faculty research’ evaluation was integrated into ‘institutional’. Within each category, changes to weighting and normalization methodology were made, detailed below.

Data Collection

To collect information, a survey designed by CK was distributed to programs selected for evaluation. Faculty members were given a month to complete the Knight Schools survey. If a school did not complete a survey, CK used public information, such as the university’s website, to collect data unless exclusion from the ranking was specifically requested. The survey is used to collect data within the timeframe of September 2011 – August 2012.

The survey was designed to evaluate three sectors wtihin an academic program environment:

1. “Institutional support” considers if the faculties are doing their part to encourage sustainability through external guest speakers and events, orientation activities, internships and consulting programs, loan forgiveness and scholarships, student competitions, faculty-led community involvement, endowed faculty chairs, institutes and centers, faculty research and ‘other’ programs or activities.

2. “Student-led initiatives” evaluates how sustainability is fostered outside teh classroom by the student body in the form of clubs, groups and events.

3. “Coursework” clarifies how and if sustainability is integrated into the curriculum of the program by looking at required and elective courses (fully dedicated to sustainability concepts and/or partially dedicated), joint degrees, and degree specializations available.

Data Analysis

Once data was collected via the survey for each program, it was analyzed by a team of CK researchers and evaluated for “sustainability” content. If a school or program completed the survey and returned it to CK, researchers would fact-check the data presented against that which is publicly available (i.e. university and program websites). Clarification emails to the program of contact were sent if necessary. With the use of Excel, score for each question were inputted into a spreadsheet and final scores for each program were calculated based on the 2011 points and weighting scheme.

Standard operating procedures for numerical evaluation of survey information developed in 2009 were strictly adhered to. An example of this evaluation procedure is as follows. For question 1, external speakers and events, data submitted by schools or collated by CK researchers typically consisted of a list of speakers, with the title, date, location, and brief description of the presentation. CK staff assessed the speaking engagement under the following criteria: speakers had to be external to the university, present at a time during the ranking time frame (September 2011-August 2012), the presentation had to be sponsored in part or whole by the faculty, the speaker must lecture on a subject directly related to social, environmental, or sustainability issues, and the session or event must be accessible to the majority of students in the program. If all criteria were met, one point was allocated for the relevant external speaker presentation. Speaking engagements listed under question 1 were evaluated until the maximum number of points (cap) was reached to obtain a perfect score for that question.

Methodology and analysis challenges

Quantification of “sustainability integration” into education is very challenging and requires the paring down of an abstract term to definable categories (i.e. institutional support, student-led initiatives, coursework), which need to be defined by measurable quantities (survey questions, i.e. the number of external speakers invited to lecture on sustainability to students as a metric of institutional support). Therefore, the design of the survey and questions asked has a significant impact on the ranking results. Over time, CK has adjusted and modified the Knight Schools survey in attempts to create an accurate as possible assessment of sustainability integration in education, basing survey design on an established method (Beyond Grey Pinstripes Report).

The distribution of the survey to selected schools and response rate is a second point of influence in the research methodology. Schools were contacted with details of the ranking and faculty members were given a month to complete the Knight Schools survey. If a school did not complete a survey, CK used public information, such as the university’s website, to collect data unless exclusion from the ranking was specifically requested. The lack of response from a school may influence the ranking outcome, but given that program websites are the primary source of information for incoming and future students, all survey information should be available online.

Finally, the most significant impact on the ranking result would be the design of the normalization scheme, or where information in a survey question is translated into a number, which is then weighted to produce a final ranking score. The cap or maximum number of points allocated per question or metric to achieve 100% certainly influences the final outcome. However, this effected all evaluated programs in the same way and is intentional.

Despite the potential limitations above, there are many benefits to producing a ranking in this manner. Quantifying the concept of sustainability puts an abstract concept in more concrete terms, which then allows one to track progress numerically over time. Numerical ranking also allows for direct comparison between things, such as programs, which is useful for benchmarking and evaluating sustainability success between programs at home and abroad.

Corporate Knights Notice and Disclaimer

This document and all of the information contained in it, including without limitation all text, data, graphs, charts (collectively, the “Information”) is the property of Corporate Knights Inc. known herein as “Corporate Knights” and is provided for informational purposes only. The Information may not be modified, reverse-engineered, reproduced or redisseminated in whole or in part without prior written permission from Corporate Knights.

The Information may not be used to create indexes, databases, risk models, analytics, software, or in connection with the issuing, offering, sponsoring, managing or marketing of any securities, portfolios, financial products or other investment vehicles utilizing or based on, linked to, tracking or otherwise derived from the Information or any other Corporate Knights data, information, products or services.

The user of the Information assumes the entire risk of any use it may make or permit to be made of the Information. CORPORATE KNIGHTS DOES NOT MAKE ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR REPRESENTATIONS WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION (OR THE RESULTS TO BE OBTAINED BY THE USE THEREOF).

Information containing any historical information, data or analysis should not be taken as an indication or guarantee of any future performance, analysis, forecast or prediction. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
None of the Information constitutes an offer to sell (or a solicitation of an offer to buy), any security, financial product or other investment vehicle or any trading strategy.

The Information may contain back tested data. Back-tested performance is not actual performance, but is hypothetical. There are frequently material differences between back tested performance results and actual results subsequently achieved by any investment strategy.

Constituents of Corporate Knights equity indexes or stock lists are listed companies, which are included in or excluded from the indexes or lists according to the application of the relevant methodologies. Accordingly, constituents in Corporate Knights equity indexes or lists may include Corporate Knights, clients of Corporate Knights or suppliers to Corporate Knights. Inclusion of a security within a Corporate Knights index or list is not a recommendation by Corporate Knights to buy, sell, or hold such security, nor is it considered to be investment advice.

Corporate Knights receives compensation in connection with licensing its indexes to third parties. Corporate Knights Inc.’s revenue includes fees based on assets in Index Linked Investments.
Any use of or access to products, services or information of Corporate Knights requires a license from Corporate Knights. Corporate Knights brands and product names are the trademarks, service marks, or registered trademarks of Corporate Knights and its subsidiaries in Canada, United States and other jurisdictions.

Click here to go back to the ranking landing page.

The post 2012 Sustainable MBA Methodology appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The Corporate Knights research team decided it was time to arm citizens, politicians and other stakeholders with a scorecard that measures the G20 group of countries (as well as the European Union) across 10 environmental, social and governance indicators.

Those acquainted with our rankings of companies – such as the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World and S&P 500 Clean Capitalism Ranking – will be familiar with some of the metrics we use, including energy, carbon and safety productivity.

But countries aren’t corporations, so getting a more complete picture meant looking at education, gender gaps, citizen inequality, unemployment figures, patent filings, perceptions of corruption, and renewable energy as a percentage of electricity production. Taken together, we believe these indicators offer a strong sense of where countries lie on the sustainability curve and, when compared year over year, point clearly to the direction they’re heading.

“Assessing a country’s sustainability requires measuring the extent to which the country is efficiently using its financial, social and natural resources to innovate, form and preserve human capital, and ensure income equality – just to name the main ones,” said Michael Yow, lead analyst at CK Capital, the research division ofCorporate Knights. “The set of indicators chosen in this ranking aims to encapsulate that.”

Why the G20? Its 19 member countries and the European Union represent two-thirds of the world’s population, 80 per cent of global trade and 90 per cent of global gross domestic product. We applaud the efforts of countries outside of this group to embrace clean energy, boost efficiency, better respect human rights and break down barriers to inequality, but the G20’s economic clout and environmental footprint make it the group to watch and encourage.

Top scorers

Germany, long recognized for its aggressive embrace of green energy, topped our ranking with a score of 80.42 out of a possible 100. Nearly 14 per cent of the country’s power generation capacity comes from renewable energy sources, not including hydroelectric power production. Germany also ranked highest for gender equality, which measures the degree to which women participate in the economy, pursue an education, occupy power positions in politics and get access to health care.

Following close on the heels of Germany was Japan, which had the highest energy and carbon productivity of all G20 countries. Japan also scored best on the Gini index, which is an economic measure of income inequality. While the gap between rich and poor has accelerated in countries such as Canada and the United States over the past 15 years, it has remained relatively unchanged in Japan.

But where Germany is strong on gender equality and renewable energy, Japan shows weakness. Excluding hydro, only 2.5 per cent of its power generation capacity comes from renewable energy, though a big push for more green energy development following the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima could significantly improve Japan’s ranking in the coming years. On gender, Japan trails its G20 peers, ranking ahead of only South Korea, Turkey, India and Saudi Arabia when it comes to equal opportunity for women.

Rounding out the Top 3 is Australia, which is perceived as the least corrupt country in the G20 and a great place to get an education, offering the best balance of access, cost and quality. But like Japan, Australia – known for the strength of its coal industry and mining sector – has much work to do when it comes to embracing renewable energy. The introduction earlier this year of a national carbon tax, however, is expected to spur more green energy development.

Honorable mention goes to South Korea, which ranked seventh. While a laggard on energy productivity and gender equality, it performed average or above-average in most other categories and stood out by grabbing top spot for its record on innovation (based on patents filed as a percentage of the labor force) and safety, and for having the lowest unemployment rate in the G20.

North America

As close neighbors and trading partners, it’s not surprising that the United States and Canada ranked back to back, claiming fifth and sixth place respectively. Both countries earned above-average scores for education, safety productivity, gender equality, innovation and perceptions of corruption. On corruption, Canada was viewed much more favorably than the U.S., ranking second only to Australia.

On weaknesses, America is struggling socially and Canada is struggling environmentally. The U.S. is among the worst in terms of income equality, ranking 16th out of 20. Its employment rate, at 14th place, is also below average. Canada, by comparison, lands in the middle of the pack on unemployment and a respectable fifth on income equality.

On carbon and energy productivity, the tables are turned: the U.S. outperforms its northern neighbor. The U.S. is ranked sixth for the amount of GDP generated per metric ton of greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 10th place for Canada. America also gets more GDP per unit of energy consumed, ranking eighth where Canada ranks 12th.

This latter finding is consistent with the recent energy-efficiency scorecard put out by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), which ranked Canada 11th and the U.S. ninth out of the world’s 12 largest economies for the efficiency of industry, buildings and transportation.

But as the council pointed out, this is no reason for the U.S. to brag. “The overall story is disappointing,” it concluded. “The United States, long considered an innovative and competitive world leader, has progressed slowly.” Countries such as Germany and Japan, it added, continue to surge ahead. “The inefficiency in the U.S. economy means a tremendous waste of energy resources and money,” ultimately making the country less competitive against many of its global peers.

Lowest scorers

Our report concludes that South Africa, India and Saudi Arabia are the biggest sustainability laggards in the G20, achieving scores of 23.60, 19.79 and 14.79, respectively, out of 100. Across every category all three countries rank 10th or lower (where data is available), with the exception of gender equality in South Africa, which ranked an impressive second only to Germany.

India ranked at the bottom for education, South Africa had the highest unemployment rate and oil-rich Saudi Arabia – no shock – was lowest for the percentage of renewable energy in its electricity system.

Also unsurprising is that Saudi Arabia ranked 20th for gender equality – though for the first time in its history the Islamic country, ruled strictly by Sharia law, let a female athlete compete in the 2012 Summer Olympics after intense pressure from the International Olympic Committee. (Women are still not permitted to drive a vehicle, however.)

India also has some work to do around gender equality, where it ranked 18th – the same position it holds for its high unemployment rate. The world’s second-most populous country needs to also do a better job of driving innovation from its workforce, if its 19th place for patent filings is any indication. It was also among the lowest for workplace safety. Russia handily beat out all other countries for being considered the most corrupt country in the G20.

The Corporate Knights’ Sustainable Countries Scorecard offers, first and foremost, a sense of where countries rank relative to each other on environmental, social and governance criteria. At the same time, it’s important to recognize that even a high score for any particular indicator still leaves room for significant improvement.

The G20 has publicly stated its commitment to promoting inclusive, sustainable and “green” economic growth that decouples economic expansion from environmental degradation. Collectively, these economic titans are far from reaching that goal, according to anti-poverty group Oxfam.

“The stakes are high: over half the world’s poorest people live in G20 countries, and rising inequality threatens to prevent them benefiting from economic growth,” it concluded in a recent briefing paper. “Meanwhile, G20 countries alone consume almost all the natural resources that the planet is capable of replenishing each year. Unsustainable patterns of usage are driving dangerous climate change and depleting the natural resources upon which poor people depend for their livelihoods.” Oxfam’s advice: “They must now practise what they preach and tackle these linked, but distinct, challenges of equality and sustainability.”

At Corporate Knights, our aim is to help you keep score and showcase the leaders. This scorecard is the first of many to come.

The post Scoring the world’s economic powerhouses appeared first on Corporate Knights.

A report by the D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute in May highlighted the slowdown in growth levels for the industry: Global wind power capacity grew 21 per cent in 2011, down from 24 per cent growth the year before and 31 per cent in 2009. A total of $75 billion was invested in global wind energy installations in 2011, down 22 per cent from 2010. China continued to lead growth, responsible for 43 per cent of increased capacity last year, followed by the United States with 17 per cent.

Part of the slowdown is a result of Germany and Spain moving to cut traditional FIT subsidies that originally led them to become leaders in renewable energy. These two countries, home to 21 per cent of global wind power generation, have done so partially due to the declining price of wind turbines, but also because of eurozone fiscal woes pressuring governments into austerity measures.

The United States, responsible for a fifth of global wind generation, is causing similar shocks through the industry. Assisted by the 2005 energy bill and the 2009 stimulus, the U.S. has been steadily adding wind capacity. In 2011, American wind energy expanded by 27 per cent, with $14 billion invested over that period.

Projections for 2012 show similar growth levels. Several incentive programs, led by the renewable energy production tax credit, have been credited with spurring such growth. Yet despite their success, increased political polarization over renewable energy in the U.S. Congress has led most analysts to conclude that these programs will all expire at the end of the year. As projects need an average of 18 months to be completed, wind manufacturers are already cutting jobs. Danish company Vestas laid off employees at a Colorado wind tower factory in July, stating that “uncertainty over whether Congress will extend the production tax credit is leading to a general market slowdown for wind power manufacturers and developers throughout the U.S.” The consultancy IHS Emerging Energy Research forecasts that U.S. demand will plummet 86 per cent in 2013 without the tax credit.

Surging supplies of natural gas are also affecting the domestic wind industry. New wind installations represented 32 per cent of all new electrical generation capacity brought online last year, but were eclipsed by the 49 per cent of natural gas also added to the grid. Expanded shale gas drilling has lowered prices considerably, with cheap natural gas crowding out potential utility investment in renewables and natural gas-fired power plant construction at an all-time high.

As a result of U.S. market uncertainty and FIT cutbacks in Europe, turbine manufacturers and clean energy advocates are relying on China to maintain demand. Siemens, Vestas and other leading European manufacturers have expanded their operations there in recent years, but for the first time in a decade, the amount of new wind power capacity in China declined in 2011. The slowdown is due to a systemic failure over the past decade to connect new Chinese wind turbines to the grid. According to the International Energy Agency, China bypassed the United States in total gigawatts (GW) of wind power capacity in 2010 but generated less than half the amount of wind-based electricity. Wind farm developers were incented for years by local and state governments that pushed for increased economic output by any means necessary, despite being located in areas with poor grid connectivity. For the first time last year, the central government placed caps on the number of projects each region could sign off on, with the National Energy Administration announcing it would cut the number of new wind power projects by 40 per cent in 2012.

The Chinese government has dedicated $400 billion to upgrade the grid by 2015, according to Dong Luying of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planning agency. At a speech in May, she explained that “China’s wind power sector used to focus on its development speed, but now more attention is directed to the quality of its development. Last year’s slowdown marked the beginning of this adjustment period.”

Wind manufacturers are now looking to Japan, after the country’s first renewable energy FIT was introduced in July, to help the country move away from its reliance on nuclear energy in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. Although the program offers more generous subsidies to solar manufacturers, industry analysts at CLSA Pacific estimate that wind capacity could reach 7.6 GW in four years. Brazil is another emerging market for turbines, after increasing its wind power generation by 50 per cent in 2011. Professor Everaldo Feitosa of the Brazil Wind Energy Center credits this rapid growth to policies implemented by the Brazilian National Sustainable Development Bank. The Brazilian Wind Energy Association believes this is just the start, with more than 7 GW of projects in the pipeline for completion before 2016.

With the major wind power markets all facing significant obstacles to continued levels of expansion, 2013 promises to be a difficult year for the industry.

The post A chill in the wind appeared first on Corporate Knights.

CK: What will the Rebuild the Dream campaign be focusing on in the lead-up to and immediately following the election? It seems so far that tuition fees and home ownership have been two big issues for you.

JONES: A college education is part of the springboard out of poverty and into the middle class, just like home ownership. But these days, getting a college education and buying a house seem more like trap doors into poverty for the middle class, and we’ve got to change that. So we launched two very aggressive campaigns to keep the interest rate on student loans from doubling, and also to get relief for homeowners with underwater mortgages. That effort is building credibility in the media. We will then be pivoting at the end of the year when the big budget battle goes down. We’ll be fighting a major war to prevent the Bush tax cuts for the rich from being extended, and to protect essential programs from the meat cleaver.

CK: You’ve said you see potential for creating a Tea Party for the left, and that the left has to start playing hardball. Can you explain that?

JONES: The Tea Party is a brilliant invention because it took previously existing donors and activists and ideas, repackaged them, and positioned them both inside and outside the Republican Party. The Tea Party now has all the benefits of being a third party in America with none of the downside. They can present their own ideas. They can make electoral challenges to Republicans they don’t like in the primary season. And they can even chip into certain pieces of legislation. But when it comes to a general election they’re able to walk back into the Republican Party as it is, and essentially have their cake and eat it too.

CK: And this is lacking on the left?

JONES: For progressives, who make up the majority of the Democratic Party, we have no such mechanism. So even though many of our ideas are quite popular as far as tax fairness for all Americans and concern about income inequality and big money and politics, we have not yet evolved a mechanism to push Democrats to stick up for that agenda. We think that is a weakness for progressives, but also a weakness for the party overall because the spine is not visible all too often. Therefore it’s a weakness for the country, because we think our ideas are good. Take strong private-sector initiative, balance it off with smart tax policy and intelligent regulation, and you get a great country.

CK: That all sounds like common sense.

JONES: In some ways, so-called progressives are actually very conservative because they are trying to conserve some of the wisdom of our grandparents, who, after the Great Depression, knew they had to keep Wall Street on a fairly tight leash and protect the working people. In some ways, people who want to call themselves conservatives are quite radical and reckless because the ideas they are pursuing were not only thrown in the garbage can by our grandparents when they created the New Deal, but also have proven quite disastrous in every other country. That’s the idea that you can have a country where the market is free but the people aren’t, because they are subjected to elections that are bought and paid for by the rich and they have to live under fear of unemployment without any social safety net or sturdy ladders of opportunity. So in a way, the Tea Party is really the party of aggressive radicals and our ideas are the sturdier and more proven ideas of trying to build a middle class in a country. But it does require that wealthy people who have done well in America do well by America by paying their taxes, respecting our air and water, and creating good jobs here.

CK: Is America broke?

JONES: There’s this big myth out there that America is broke. America is not broke – we’re the richest country in the history of the world, even today. Our economy is almost twice as big as China’s with a third of the population and our economy is as big as almost all of Europe right now. It’s not that America is broke, it’s that the social contract is broken – the idea that by creating a positive business environment and protecting property rights, people who work hard and play by the rules can get ahead; that those who get ahead pay America back in the form of good taxes and wages. That’s the social contract we’re trying to hold onto. But here, today, we have people making more and more money and not wanting to pay America back to keep the game going.

CK: Somehow it seems Tea Party types have turned the story around, suggesting that the kind of return to the social contract you mention is almost un-American.

JONES: The debate has evolved into this silly extremism, based on the belief that a totally unregulated market and profit-making with no sense of social responsibility – or even concern for the national interest – is the highest form of patriotism; as if any concern for the impact of American air, water, children, middle class, is somehow anti-patriotic. It’s this nutso form of cheap patriotism that disguises this real wrecking-ball agenda for most of the things that have made America great. We stand for a deeper patriotism. Of course we should excel as a country economically, and we want to continue doing so. But that’s not the only thing to be proud of. That assessment, only measuring market success, makes America way too small. We also led the world in environmental protection, consumer protection and in labor rights, and in civil and women’s rights to grow the number of people who could participate. You can find any old country nowadays where they just let the big global corporations do whatever they want to do. That’s not the pathway to having a great country.

CK: To what degree has corporate meddling in political affairs and intense corporate lobbying contributed to the problem?

JONES: There are some very wealthy elements in the United States who appear to have an agenda; who pour more corporate cash into our electoral system and push more ordinary people out. We don’t just have a budget deficit; we have a democracy deficit. We need big money out and we need ordinary voters in. Super PACs (political action committees) are probably going to spend more money than the presidential candidates themselves to impact our election. Can you imagine running for President of the United States, the most powerful position in the world, and you have to wake up in the morning and turn on the TV yourself to see what the ads are on your own campaign? Where people you don’t know, and by law you can’t have contact with, have more money to spend on your race than you do? I mean, that’s crazy. And that’s not in the constitution. That is so far from democracy. Democracy shouldn’t be for sale. Corporate money should be used for corporate purposes. They shouldn’t be used for political purposes.

CK: Can you point to any of the biggest violators?

JONES: The Koch brothers have done tremendous damage to the country as a whole because they sell their dirty energy and use the proceeds to pump dirty money into our political system. They’re not just fouling our air and water, they’re fouling our process.

CK: Do you see a role for responsible corporations to help improve the situation? Do you believe there can be a more responsible form of capitalism?

JONES: I’m a big champion of socially responsible, ecological restorative capitalism. To me that is a big opportunity if we can use our entrepreneurial genius and our innovation and our enterprise to solve problems, rather than making them worse. Maybe then we can get out of this mess we’re in economically and ecologically. In fact, that’s the only way because governments are good at some things and not others. We want America’s government to be on the side of our problem solvers in the U.S. economy and not on the side of our problem makers. The problem solvers are in the solar industry, the wind industry, organic foods – they are coming up with new technologies that allow people to share their resources without having to buy as much crap. But the government is on the side of the old polluting industries and big global corporations that are continually trying to force feed Americans unhealthy foods and unnecessary products. There has to be some kind of a cultural realignment, economic realignment and political realignment if we’re to have a future that is livable.

CK: Do you think the Occupy movement has legs? Will the voices of the 99 per cent grow louder and more forceful?

JONES: It’s way too early to say what the future of Occupy is or isn’t. Occupy is only a year old. Dr. (Martin Luther) King was 24 years old during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It took him more than a year to win that fight, and you really didn’t hear from the civil rights movement for four years between Montgomery and February 1, 1960, when (black) students started blockading and sit-in protests. So if a year after Montgomery you had tried to make an assessment of the civil rights potential of the country, Dr. King and the generation right behind him, you would have come to a very erroneous view that they had become a one-hit wonder in Montgomery. You would have had the same view two years later, too. But 12 years later it became very clear that that little bus boycott was the beginning of something that changed America permanently. That’s why it’s way too early to make any definitive assessment about Occupy or any of the things that Occupy has set in motion.

CK: Where does that leave your Rebuild the Dream campaign?

JONES: We think the issues of the 99 per cent have to be met by answers for the 99 per cent. The key issues of joblessness, of underwater mortgages, of unaffordable college education, of the environment, have to be met with practical solutions. We have a 10-point program called a Contract for the American Dream – 131,203 people worked together on it online and offline to create that jobs plan, which includes campaign finance reform. There’s a way forward here, and months before Occupy Wall Street we had pulled together these 131,000 people to come up with an equal-authored jobs plan. We’ll continue to rely on it and point to it. We will keep fighting for practical solutions. Part of what happens with our media is it tends to notice things only when they are at a high point of public mobilization. Whether it’s the Tea Party or the 99 per cent or anything else, if it’s not literally storming down the street it’s judged to have disappeared. But just because it’s not on a TV screen doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

The post Van of action appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The university quickly announced in July that the agreement it itself had agreed to did not fully reflect Carleton’s policies and procedures on staff selection and budget allocations and was being renegotiated. It pointed out that “donor participation at Carleton is not unusual, but there is a difference between participation and decision-making and it’s an important distinction.” Where does that distinction lie? Is it possible for Canadian universities to find that middle ground in public-private partnerships without compromising academic freedom?

Up until 20 years ago, large-scale philanthropic donations to Canadian academic institutions were unusual. In fact, the first business school in Canada to be named after a donor occurred in 1995, when the Richard Ivey family donated $11 million to the University of Western Ontario. Today, 18 business schools have changed their names to reward large-scale donors.

Ken Wyman, program co-ordinator in the post-graduate fundraising and volunteer management program at Humber College, believes that federal and provincial tax changes in the 1990s encouraged private gift-giving to post-secondary institutions, including various provincial matching grants for funds raised privately by universities. Between 1997 and 2007, according to Statistics Canada, philanthropic activity as a source of revenue grew at an average rate of 11 per cent per year. As schools expanded their fundraising departments, large donors began to command a greater share of attention. In 2007, the head of fundraising at the University of Ottawa, David Mitchell, foreshadowed the increasing importance of philanthropy in an interview with the Globe and Mail. “It’s become a permanent feature of how universities do their job. The machinery of fundraising has come of age at universities in the last generation. I don’t think it is about to end.”

Financial pressures stemming from the economic downturn have resulted in university funding being capped or cut at the federal and provincial level, pushing universities to court large donors more openly. Although thousands of donations are made every year with little or no restrictions involved, philanthropists understand that increasing financial constraints are forcing universities to consider different forms of donor involvement on academic decision-making and hiring decisions. The funding of endowed chairs and the establishment of institutes, large-scale scholarship programs, research programs and new buildings have all resulted from these agreements over the past five years, with 16 to 18 of these agreements now in place across the country. With substantial public funds supplementing these donations, the private funding of programs and schools has developed into an increasingly contentious battle over academic freedom.

The Clayton H. Riddell Graduate Program in Political Management at Carleton University is only the latest in a string of public debates over donor involvement at public universities. In 2010, Barrick Gold founder Peter Munk gave $35 million to the University of Toronto to expand the Munk School of Global Affairs. Although university president David Naylor assured the public that academic freedom would not be compromised as all donors are required to sign an agreement that they will not interfere with research and teaching policy, the university is required to present a report on activities every year to a board appointed by Munk. The purpose of the report is “to discuss the programs, activities and initiatives of the School in greater detail.” Munk has withheld $15 million of the donation until 2017, allowing him to express his discontent with the direction of the school with the threat of a withdrawal of funds.

Former Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie donated $50 million to set up the Balsillie School of International Affairs out of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in 2007, in partnership with Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo. At the time, it received little fanfare, but subsequent attempts to set up a home for its school of international relations at the University of Ottawa and York University were rejected over fears of academic interference. The agreement stated that CIGI would appoint two of the five members of the steering committee, which needed to achieve unanimous approval for any decisions reached. Two hundred faculty members signed a letter to the York University senate, arguing that it gave the think tank an “unprecedented voice in matters of academic governance.”

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), representing about 65 000 faculty members and other professionals at 120 universities and colleges, has become the leading opponent of what it views as growing threats to academic freedom. It has threatened Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo with censure starting this November if they do not cancel previous agreements involving the Balsillie School of International Affairs. James Turk, CAUT’s executive director, believes that academic independence is being slowly eroded in a scramble for limited donor dollars. While speaking at a conference in February, he declared that “once you’ve allowed people to buy decision-making power through their donations, the public’s trust in the unique role that universities play will be eliminated…. Donors should have no sway over academic affairs in the community.”

Even with CAUT becoming increasingly vocal in its criticism, in the hours after York University rejected the partnership, according to CIGI, three different universities called up the think tank to outline their interest. When releasing a statement on the York University rejection, Waterloo professor Tad Homer-Dixon, who was heavily involved in drafting the agreement, criticized CAUT for being out of touch. “These public-private partnerships are the wave of the future. My response to the CAUT is get used to it, folks. We need to figure out how to do this in a way that protects academic freedom and allows for institutional innovation and creativity in universities across the country.”

Homer-Dixon notes that although free inquiry at universities is a bedrock of our liberal democracy, the federal government already wields significant control over research priorities. Through its $3 billion a year in research funding for post-secondary institutions, it is able to set “priority areas” in which research proposals are more likely to receive funding.

American universities have also been struggling with the question of donor influence for over a decade, with more brazen attempts to influence academic priorities on display in a variety of faculties. Yet for the most part the conversation has remained muted, due to the majority of top U.S. schools existing as private institutions not receiving direct taxpayer subsidies.

In the wake of the push-back over the Riddell School governance model, there has been institutional movement to set up guidelines for future deals. The Council of Ontario Universities announced in July that it has set up a working group with senior administrators to establish policies that protect academic freedom when making these agreements. One simple step would be to require full disclosure. These deals involve millions of provincial taxpayer dollars, which governments could compel administrators to release information about. It was difficult to judge what the exact details were in the CIGI-York University proposal, with the CAUT and CIGI each releasing conflicting documents to the media. Carleton University fought disclosure of its agreement with the Riddell Foundation for over a year, at one point even offering up a heavily redacted version that failed to satisfy anyone.

In recent years, university administrations have shown a willingness to flaunt their own rules that are meant to preserve academic freedom, so it’s unclear what effect guidelines like those to be proposed by the Council of Ontario Universities will have. Agreements will have to be scrutinized on a case-by-case basis, debated in the court of public opinion. What’s clear is that after decades of publicly funded universities, the dynamics at our post-secondary institutions are changing for good. We just have to make sure it’s in the public interest.

The post Donor dollars appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“It can be shocking to realize how often our attention isn’t where we want it to be,” says Brandon Rennels, the former management consultant who led the workshop.

A 2010 study of 2,250 adults by two Harvard University psychologists found that people’s minds wander an astounding 47 per cent of the time. It concluded that “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

Our minds naturally wander. We wander into regrets about the past and worries about the future. We replay scenarios over and over again, not because we want to, but because we can’t seem to stop.

Wandering minds also compromise the quality of people’s work. “High-quality attention is the productive basis for knowledge workers, and we do very little to cultivate that essential resource,” says Jeremy Hunter, a professor at the Peter F. Drucker School of Management in Los Angeles. Hunter is one of the leading teachers of mindfulness in the workplace, with clients like Toyota, Bank of America and Starbucks. “As a society, we have fundamentally ignored the value of attention.

“Mindfulness is a simple practice to cultivate attention,” he adds. “It teaches us to skilfully manage the forces that exist inside all of us. Mindfulness raises awareness of what’s going on inside of you, so you can better deal with what’s going on outside you. It’s the education we never got.”

Mindfulness has its origin in ancient meditation practice. The term was popularized by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh in his book The Miracle of Mindfulness. In secular settings, its use was pioneered by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program.

Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally. There’s a shift in perspective as we take a step back from our thoughts and feelings and view moment-to-moment experience with more clarity and objectivity. We are able to appreciate life in the present moment, whether it’s the presence of a loved one, a blossoming flower or the face of a co-worker telling us that something’s wrong, even when they don’t say anything.

With practice, we change the neural pathways in our brain. Scientists used to think our brains became hard-wired early in life. Now we know our brains change and develop all our lives in response to how we think, a phenomenon called neuroplasticity.

Scientists have correlated activity on the left side of the pre-frontal cortex with feeling energized, enthusiastic and joyful, and on the right side with anxiety and sadness. They studied senior Tibetan monks and found left-side activity that was off the scale. Indeed, studies have shown mindfulness training increases happiness, reduces stress and anxiety, and improves emotional intelligence, resilience, attention, decision-making and creativity.

Hunter contends mindfulness “can shed light on the contradictions of how we go about working and bring our actions into greater alignment with our values.” Those values themselves can be shifted. A recent study found training corporate managers in mindfulness “can succeed in shifting psychological traits and personal values towards increasing levels of social consciousness, and therefore towards increasing likelihood of socially responsible behaviour.”

Diana Chapman Walsh, former president of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, says mindfulness allows her to see other people’s internal struggles, and to do so “with compassion and empathy.” It gives her “the ability to see in a penetrating way.”

Chade-Meng Tan, the creator of Google’s mindfulness program and author of the book Search Inside Yourself, cheerfully claims that mindfulness can bring fun and profits to a workplace. Developing mindfulness may be simple, but it’s not easy. To be effective, it’s not enough to understand it intellectually. You have to train your mind, and that takes practice, diligence and determination.

Hunter says business is still at an early stage in recognizing the value of attention and mindfulness training. However, “the conversation is different now than it was 10 years ago. Then, it was not a foregone conclusion that managing yourself was important. Today, people are more open and heads readily nod.” He adds that “it took about 60 years for the West to optimize industrial work. After that we had enormous productivity gains. We’re about 40 years into a widespread knowledge economy.”

Hunter asserts that mindfulness can provide the foundation for both huge productivity gains for employers and a more socially responsible form of capitalism.

The post Zen and the art of work appeared first on Corporate Knights.

CK: Why did Bell take on this issue?

DEACON: Because of the stigma around mental health and illness, it’s an area that hasn’t been championed in a significant way. The objective for us is to really raise the awareness, get people talking and hopefully, in doing so, make a difference in the lives of people because of the investments we are making in an area that is grossly underfunded. Given the business we’re in and the strength of the Bell brand, we can use that heft to get the conversation going, change attitudes, reduce stigma and, of course, lead by example in terms of our own workplace. It’s imperative to do that. It was the right thing to do.

CK: How significant is the impact of mental illness on workplace productivity?

DEACON: The stats are that mental health issues account for 30 per cent of short-term disability claims and 70 per cent of the costs.

CK: Why the disproportionately high costs?

DEACON: Typically the absence rates are longer, and there is a greater proportion of people who go off on short-term leave for mental health problems and end up on long-term disability. There’s a lot of evidence that shows that the isolation that comes when you’re on disability, and the things that lead to good mental health – like connections with other people, meaning in life, etc. – can be lost when you’re on disability. There’s a greater sense of isolation, and that can exacerbate the condition and lead to even longer absence. The research shows that the longer you’re off, the less likely you are to come back.

CK: And what of those people who don’t leave and try to struggle through it?

DEACON: There’s this other thing called presenteeism. It’s this notion of people being at work, but not being well. Canadians with depression report that they function at work at 62 per cent of capacity. So people with depression who are at work are claiming they are definitely not working up to snuff. But generally I describe people from four points of view: they’re well at work, they’re not well at work, they’re sick and off work, and they’re returning to work. You want to have programs around all four, because certainly it’s better for the company and the individual that if they’re well they stay well, or if they’re not well they get better before they need to go off.

CK: What kind of stresses at work can lead to mental health problems?

DEACON: There’s workload, deadlines, feeling undervalued, and lack of job satisfaction. The issue of control – the ability to have control over your work day – is an important one. So, too, is the idea of having to take on other people’s work, or shoulder more. Organizational culture is an important factor. People can be stressed when it’s not clear what’s expected of them. And then there’s the whole area of civility and respect, bullying, all that. But being stressed doesn’t mean you’re mentally ill.

CK: Does a company’s reputation – good or bad – have an impact on mental health? If an employer is viewed as an environmental laggard or is always being negatively portrayed in the media for being a bad apple, can this trigger stresses that can contribute to anxiety, depression or other conditions?

DEACON: I haven’t seen any literature that specifically talks about that, but if you work for a company either perceived to be one of the bad guys, or in fact is one of the bad guys – I would view tobacco companies that way – it would have an impact on how you would feel about the company and your sense of pride in your company, work, and what you’re contributing. We take home a paycheque, but what other psychic values do you get from your work? If you work for a company that does good or is perceived to be good, you’re going to take home some “feel good” points for doing something important and worthwhile. So it seems logical to me that the opposite would be true.

CK: An emerging area of study around mental health relates to the general anxiety felt about the state of the world. Issues such as climate change, environmental degradation, economic turmoil and social injustice – all of these at a macro-level can affect the mental health of the general population, and the Occupy movement may be one expression of this. Would you say that can be exacerbated in the workplace if an employer is perceived as being part of the problem?

DEACON: Definitely against the backdrop of the difficult economy, the fact that Mother Nature keeps reminding us who’s really in charge, and the role we have as humans in our environment and the health of our planet – fresh water, air to breathe, and all that stuff – that creates a level of underlying anxiety. It’s kind of like a layer cake. That is a layer, and you have other life problems – financial problems, death, divorce. Then you talk about working for a company you’re not proud of in terms of its contribution. These all layer on to create an even greater climate for stress. Is it worse now than when I was younger? I don’t know. What I love generally about people is that, in spite of everything, they still have children, they get married and they buy houses, and they love life, in the face of all this stuff.

CK: Of course, some people are better at coping with these stresses than others.

DEACON: There’s a homeless man that lives at the end of my street. He seems to sleep in the bank at the corner. He’s lived on my street as long as I have, which is about 10 years. Such resilience he shows. He’s part of the community – everybody gives him clothes and water. He is who he is. He seems content with his life. But, boy, it speaks to the resilience of humanity.

CK: Presumably, employers that help their employees be more resilient on an individual level benefit at the corporate level. Is this an uncharted path for employers?

DEACON: When we started the initiative and agreed right from the get-go that leading by example in the workplace had to be one of (our objectives), I thought I’d just go to the shelf and get ‘that book’ on how to implement mental health practices in the workplace. And it didn’t exist. So for those companies that want to do not only the right thing but a good thing and a beneficial thing for the corporation, the roadmap is not clear. There’s been a lot of work done in the last couple of years to help create a voluntary national standard for psychological health and safety in the workplace, which I’m encouraged about. Will it be perfect? No. But it will have brought together all of the interested stakeholders with all of the diverse perspectives they have – whether it’s labour, big business, small business, public and private, academic – to create a framework that will provide for the first time a bit of a consensus.

CK: Curious, since mental health can affect workplace productivity and company performance so much, and on a broad scale has an impact on the economy, should we be factoring the mental health of nations into GDP?

DEACON: That’s an interesting question. The argument that’s been made for years is that if you have a healthy and psychologically safe workplace, then your disability numbers will come down so it will have an impact on GDP. The relapse rate will come down. The argument that’s been made over the years is that if you get it right it actually will impact your bottom line. From my perspective, I’m okay and happy with that positioning as being part of being good for business, because I believe it’s true, and I believe it will make it more likely that companies will do the things they need to do in order to create that environment. That’s because the payoff will be there in the end.

The post Mind matters appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In the workplace, there is a compelling case to be made that this confluence of economic, environmental and climate volatility may increasingly add up to a decline in employee mental health and, by association, worker productivity. A smoke signal of note: a 2012 report sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation and co-authored by Lise van Susteren, a psychiatrist and trauma expert, stated: “The economic costs of climate change will be high by any measure. But its specific effect on U.S. mental health, societal well-being and productivity will increase current U.S. expenditures on mental health services, adding to our current $300 billion annual burden.”

Rensia Melles is the manager of global solutions at Shepell.fgi, where she develops employee assistance and health and wellness programs used by thousands of organizations around the world. She said company employees are affected directly and indirectly by environmental and climate change. “Direct experience can cause distress. So, too, can indirect experience through media and conversations with people, which may lead to anxiety about the future. There’s also the psychosocial impact related to the conflict between those who see that climatic change is happening and ‘deniers’ who say it’s not happening,” explained Melles.

And if a company is directly contributing, or perceived to be contributing, to the problem?

Take energy giant Enbridge, ranked by Corporate Knights as one of the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations. The company recently took a big hit to its reputation because of toxic oil spills in Alberta, Michigan and now Wisconsin. For example, a British Columbia newspaper reported that a movie audience in the provincial capital of Victoria booed when shown an Enbridge promotional video for its planned 1,000-kilometre Northern Gateway pipeline project. Could reactions like these affect the morale of Enbridge employees, who are witnessing more negative reports about the company in the news media? Do stress and anxiety afflict its workers more than those of an oil company like Cenovus, now seen as an up-and-coming corporate social responsibility leader? Similarly, did morale plunge at BP – and mental health claims rise – after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, or at Exxon Mobil after the company was regularly cited for funding organizations whose raison d’être was to discredit state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed climate science?

“There is no research available at this time that shows a negative correlation between a lack of corporate social responsibility and employee stress,” said Melles. However, research has shown that: “Companies that have a good reputation for corporate social responsibility, including employee care, are more likely to have employees who stay [and] are committed to productivity and to company objectives.”

Much depends on whether or not an employee views her job as a career, rather than as a paycheque, said University of Toronto professor Carolyn Dewa, head of the occupational health program at Ontario’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. “If the worker views her company as a place that is tied to her career, and that she contributes to the success of that company, she is at risk of experiencing more stress when the company is not successful,” said Dewa, noting that negative publicity could fuel this stress, particularly if the employer’s financial viability is at stake, and thus job security.

Keeping employees committed is why some organizations provide what could be termed “guilt offsets” – a way to counter how workers may feel about a given employer, its products and services, or its contributions to economic, environmental or climate crises. Such offsets might include allowing workers to volunteer time for “feel good” programs such as Habitat for Humanity, or community charities.

“Corporate social responsibility has increasingly become a topic in social media and marketing, so it is hard for employees and consumers to … see what a company is really doing,” said Melles. “Habitat for Humanity days have been co-opted into this external marketing and do have a positive effect for individual employees.”

Climate change’s visible environmental impacts include raging wildfires in Colorado and fast-melting ice in the Arctic or Greenland, as witnessed in 2012. But perhaps the most debilitating stressor will be its broader economic impacts – increased food prices, higher insurance premiums, more expensive energy and high adaptation costs. One need only look to Europe to observe how an economic breakdown in the eurozone – marked by high unemployment and austerity programs that target cuts in health and social services – is contributing to a wide range of mental health issues. These include rising suicide rates among the unemployed and a growth in chronic stress owing to job insecurity.

The World Health Organization estimates that since the European economic crisis began in 2007, mental health problems have led to a 3 to 4 per cent drop in the gross national product of EU countries. In Greece, suicide rates rose by 40 per cent in the first half of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. Today, the need for mental health services has grown so pressing that some medical facilities cannot provide adequate treatment, referral or follow up.

There’s no reason to think North America is immune. In the United States, prior to the 2008 financial crisis, a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health estimated that depression affected 1.3 million adults and cost 86 million days and tens of billions of dollars in lost productivity each year. As the past four years have unfolded – and job insecurity has become a source of constant worry for working Americans – the number of U.S. workers affected by depression and a whole array of mental health issues can only have trended upwards.

Dewa has been watching the trend closely. “I work with a lot of different organizations and companies looking at their disability data,” she said. “There has been a rise in disability-related mental illness over the past 10 years, which is why there’s an interest in programs for improving mental health among the working population.”

A paper co-authored by Doug Smeall, assistant vice-president of health management services at Toronto-based health insurer Sun Life Financial, found that it isn’t uncommon these days to find that mental health issues account for 30 to 40 per cent of a company’s short-term disability claims. “For most companies, the prevalence of mental health conditions is approaching 30 per cent of all long-term disability cases and has been increasing at a rate of approximately 0.5 to 1 per cent per year over the past several years.”

Significant numbers like these explain why many countries are beginning to set occupational health standards for “psychological safety” in the workplace. The question is whether those numbers are poised to rise even faster. An emerging expert consensus points to climate change as an added mental health burden that could multiply the debilitating mental health impacts associated with economic crises. Climate change could end up being the “mother of all stress multipliers,” given its ability to waylay agriculture, drive up food prices, contribute to job insecurity, and spur nations and organizations to compete ruthlessly for scarce resources. But more research is clearly needed.

In the meantime, some organizations are taking pre-emptive actions. Joel Levey and Michelle Levey are clinical psychologists based in Seattle, Washington, who have worked with Intel, NASA, the U.S. Army Green Berets, the Clinton Global Initiative and many others to help leaders and employees develop the psychological skills required to adapt to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity – the four telltale fingerprints of the 21st century. Today, they collaborate with the Google Mindfulness Laboratory, where they teach meditation techniques to help Google employees manage stress, improve working relationships and create breakthrough innovation.

“For leaders, developing employees’ ability to work effectively under the more chaotic and overwhelming circumstances [of economic and climate crisis] is a worthy and noble endeavour,” Joel Levey said. “These people will be the innovators for the new systems, organizations and communities that have the most long-term viability.”

As the toll of the economic crisis on mental health continues to grimly unfold – and the impacts of climate change inexorably weaken societal resilience – the stakes for human civilization grow higher each day.

Leaders who feel in their guts that the mental health of workers may grow worse as jobs become less secure and the climate becomes more unpredictable and inhospitable should address employees’ well-placed concerns and prepare for potential organizational impacts. The C-suite must convince their boards that the adaptability and flexibility needed to sustain business success requires ambitious, innovative, and scalable mental health and wellness programs. And, last but not least, a strong commitment to clean capitalism.

The post Workplace environment appeared first on Corporate Knights.