The Executive Forum on Corporate Citizenship

The Executive Forum on Corporate Citizenship

Aligning and Integrating and Institutionalizing Corporate Citizenship

The Executive Forum on Corporate Citizenship is a landmark community of practice initiative in which eight companies have come together with The Center to understand the process of initiating and building momentum to institutionalize and integrate corporate citizenship within their companies.

This unique grouping of companies includes Abbott Laboratories, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Agilent Technologies, JPMorgan Chase, Levi Strauss & Company, Petro Canada, Unocal and Verizon. The project is supported by the Ford Foundation and the corporations involved in the study.

The Center’s two years of research has yielded findings that address unanswered questions in the corporate citizenship field. Specifically:

1. How do companies initiate and build momentum to institutionalize corporate citizenship and integrate it throughout the business?

2. How can managers catalyze this type of organizational change from “middle management” out through the rest of the organization?

3. How do companies initiate and build momentum for corporate citizenship when there is no perceived sense of urgency?

This research will result in tools, convenings and other products designed to help other companies follow this leading approach. The first product from this work is the Ten Half Truths of Corporate Citizenship which highlights the strengths and weaknesses of tactics often used to promote corporate citizenship.

The final report offering the findings of the research will be released in early 2005.