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By Daphne Stanford

Corporations and small businesses are becoming increasingly concerned with corporate social responsibility, or CSR.  Specifically, they are upping the community outreach aspect of CSR, which is becoming less of a social luxury and more of a responsible necessity that helps people feel more connected to the businesses they choose to patronize.  Beyond functioning as a progressive nicety, shareholders are increasingly concerned with both financial performance and social responsibilities.

Community building, furthermore, is not necessarily an expensive venture.  According to research from Rutgers University, a circular economy — which is restorative and regenerative by design — could add $1 trillion to the global economy by 2025.  

A circular economy is defined in opposition to a linear economy, based on the ‘take-make-dispose’ concept, which is inherently unsustainable.  A linear economy is unconcerned with community building, whereas a circular economy stresses the inherent connection between all members of a neighborhood or community, from the producers of a product to the consumers to the suppliers farther down the supply chain and all beneficiaries of said product.

It’s been found that balancing sustainability and profitability doesn’t have to impact the bottom line: the first way, according to Marylhurst University, is to look for inexpensive sustainable changes to business practices.  Businesses can also make an investment in sustainability, such as via investing in solar panels, knowing it will save money in the future.  They can take one further step and make tangible additions a community project, inviting neighbors and adjacent business owners to participate in some of the retrofitting and renovations.  Or they might simply have a grand re-opening of their office space, demonstrating their commitment to sustainability and community-building, both, by extending an invitation to all neighborhood residents.  

Of course, physical changes and ‘green’ implementations to physical structures and processes are also important.  For example, choosing to minimize record duplication, instead opting for storage along with document scanning and digitization, helps to put less of a dent in landfills and forests by preserving and protecting what is already there, rather than generate unnecessary paper waste: “Record storage keeps documents out of landfills where they pollute our environment, and instead allows important documents and information to be available for reference time and time again.”

Another example of a sustainable practice is composting and community gardening, something that is easily achievable with the help of a little planning and neighborhood participation.  TriplePundit points out that access to local soil through community-based composting allows people to grow food cheaper than would be possible according to a conventional model, thus making it possible for communities to address food insecurity.  In terms of ways a company can choose to give back to its community, a community garden is surely among the most tangible and straightforward.

Moreover, the private sector could stand to learn quite a bit from some in the public sector.  This is especially true because public administrators help ensure that government rules and policies have the desired effect on the community, and, as with public groups or entities, private companies are often saddled with complicated political hierarchies that can complicate a company’s ability to meet its CSR or financially-related goals.  Since experienced public administrators begin to move out of operations and into management and compliance positions, administrators with several years of experience are often sought out by private companies in search of qualified professionals who can oversee compliance departments.  

Part of the reason that community-mindedness and sustainability are so important is because companies don’t operate within a vacuum.  That is, their actions and decisions spill over into the communities out of which they are based, influencing the physical and psychic landscape of that place and the people within it.  Let’s take an unlikely example: Great Panther Silver Ltd, a mining company, makes a concerted effort to act responsibly, utilizing a “good neighbor policy” in the towns and communities where they operate.  According to Mariana Fregonese, director of Corporate Communications and Sustainability, “We need to get to know each other and build trust in each community where we operate because their needs and realities are different.  Afterwards, we work in a partnership approach to achieve shared goals.”

The Customer Insight Group recommends three features for company reward programs in order to reflect the needs of consumers: personalization, forward-thinking technology, and relationship building.  These types of rewards inspire true customer loyalty, they argue, as well as help to build an active, authentic community.  Furthermore, community engagement, The Guardian argues, is a way to understand and act upon critical workplace, marketplace, and environmental issues: “It is not additional; it is central.  It is not about being nice; it is about addressing business objectives.  And it is definitely not about ‘giving back’; it is about companies being part of, not apart from, society.”  

We are left, therefore, with a new model of corporations and small businesses as being called to engage with their communities in a genuine and substantial way—becoming, in essence, a community member, themselves.  That is the call, then, that companies are faced with: a mandate to do more, do it better, and do it often.  Moreover, they should not act inside a vacuum, silently writing checks to philanthropic organizations in a dark room.  Rather, they should go out into their communities and become the change they wish to see in the world.  To do any less would be morally irresponsible and essentially lazy.

That’s the 21st-century challenge, then: to be socially responsible and human, to boot.  To truly build a community out of flesh and blood is the challenge.  The rewards are not only financial but also spiritually and socially aware of injustice and inequality.  It also, ideally, would help fill the void many of us feel in this simultaneously disconnected and hyper-connected world full of social media and smartphone apps.  Any gesture that might provide an opportunity to increase actual face-time between neighbors and community members would do a lot of good toward building the kind of connections that are most needed in the world, as we know it.  

Image credit: Flickr/See-Ming Lee

Daphne Stanford writes poetry & nonfiction, and she believes in the power of art, education, and community radio to change the world.  Since 2012, she’s been the host of “The Poetry Show!” Sundays at 5 p.m. on Radio Boise.  Follow her on Twitter @TPS_on_KRBX.

An unseasonably hot day that scientists attribute to climate change can be either a drag or a benefit depending upon where you live and the time of year. The same goes for an extraordinary dump of snow that creates snow days out of work schedules and keeps kids at home when you're not prepared. But climate change has delivered other headaches over the past year that ultimately translate to extra costs for households and will likely impact our wallets in future years, as well.

Food and services

The most talked about cost of climate change is often food and services. The Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged in October that "climate change could make it more difficult to grow crops, raise animals, and catch fish in the same ways and same places as we've done in the past." To the consumer, that can mean higher costs for food and scarcity of products that we have come to depend on because of unpredictable weather or increased costs for agricultural irrigation (the almond industry has been battling this issue in California for years).

And of course, if it's more expensive for the consumer to buy those almonds, ground coffee, chicken or beef products, we'll notice it when we pay the restaurant bill or buy a cup of joe at the local convenience store as well. According to the Climate Institute, climate change is a real threat to that morning cuppa. The good news, is the coffee industry is already looking at new technology and mitigation methods to combat some of those stifling effects of climate change.

The domino effect: Tourism and the services we depend upon

Twentieth century history is filled with stories of towns that managed to remake themselves on the strength of an innovative tourist trade. Small pioneer and agricultural towns up and down the West Coast have discovered in recent decades that they could reboost their economies by promoting tourism. Old railway and farming towns like Leavenworth, WA (now a alpine vacation getaway) and Astoria, OR (an old fishing town that relies on tourism to boost its revenue) have in recent years thrived by finding ways to bring tourism into their towns. In so doing, they've proven that tourism isn't just a secondary industry, but a very valuable means for cities to pay their operating expenses, provide jobs, build schools and ensure resiliency.

For some cities that industry is already facing threat from global warming in the form of rising tides and potential droughts. Areas around Astoria have already begun looking at mitigation to save the beaches that draw in travelers during the summer months. Island Press points out that about two-thirds of the forests in the Northwest serve as destinations for tourists year-round and can be at risk from global warming, flooding and other environmental problems. As small Northwest lumber towns learned early on in their development, what happens in the forest often impacts the cost of living and jobs in the towns that rely upon them.

Energy costs

The EPA points out that changing environmental conditions will have a direct impact on our ability to generate energy and the options we have available in coming years. Energy production must be smarter not only in costs but in the resources it uses for cooling and generation. Our own costs at home are governed in part by that resource-savvy technology and how cities and states build and maintain their grids.

But that challenge also means that there's increasing opportunities for innovation. In the UK and some parts of the U.S. and Canada, tidal energy is making use of the changing climate to improve energy production for nearby communities. In some areas, that innovation may mean more costs in taxes, but it also means more opportunities for better energy production for future generations.

Mitigation: Wresting control from climate change

If there is anything that Florida's flooded coastlines have driven home recently it's that smart environmental planning in coastal areas is vital not only to disaster mitigation but to the changes we can't see. While some experts suggest that parts of South Florida's coastlines will be lost to global warming, there are other states that are taking action now and consider it a smart investment to a sustainable community.

Mitigation usually means higher taxes and cost of living for homeowners who ultimately bear part of the price tag of the upgrades. And those costs may mean a reduction or change in other services in their area that are sacrificed to cover the cost of mitigation.

More cost, but better quality of living?

Authors in the Journal of Climate and Ocean Economics offer a bright side: With mitigation and technological innovation comes better quality of life and safer living environments. Tourism has an opportunity to improve. Coastlines are better managed. The environmental costs that go along with our food production are better understood.

Climate change will offer numerous challenges for communities over the coming decades. But it also offers the impetus to innovate and to work in hand with the environment for a more sustainable planet.

Flickr/Brian Birke

 

 

 

 

 

by Vikas Vij

Having the ability to envision the company’s future is a critical element of successful corporate leadership. Setting bold, long-term goals allows a company to move into new, emerging areas of growth and opportunity and become future-ready. 

A new research study titled “Does a Long-Term Orientation Create Value?” slated to publish in a coming issue of the Strategic Management Journal, supports the view that corporate leaders should focus on long-term gains to attain a dominant market position and create a more secure future.

The study’s authors, Caroline Flammer of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and Pratima Bansal of the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey Business School, argue that an increased long-term orientation fosters innovation and enhances the market value of a business.

Flammer and Bansal conclude that switching to a long-term outlook can improve a company’s operating performance by several measures – return on assets, operating profits, and sales growth – within two years. Myopic leadership, on the other hand, will hamper business due to lack of investment in innovation and risky projects.

As part of the study, the management researchers set out to examine companies whose leaders made a clear break with short-termism. They identified 808 shareholder proposals on long-term executive compensation plans between 1997 and 2012, and measured the effects of the approved proposals over time.

Following the passage of long-term incentives, the researchers found that companies boosted their efforts to innovate and pursue riskier forward-looking projects. More specifically, businesses increased their research and development spending, which led to surges in the number of patents they garnered.

Flammer and Bansal also found that companies whose boards narrowly approved long-term executive incentive proposals saw their share prices jump 1.14% on the day the measures passed, compared with companies where shareholder proposals were narrowly rejected.

Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo Inc., exemplifies the long-term business approach. Nooyi identified health and wellness as one of the company’s biggest growth opportunities when she became chief executive in 2006. She has boosted R&D spending and stayed focused on transforming the maker of sugary soft drinks into a company where sales growth of healthy products outpaces the rest of the portfolio by 2025.

Source: WSJ

Image Credit: WSJ/Jemal Countess/Getty Images

For years, Israel’s kibbutzim (collective farms) offered Jewish settlers the chance to build a life in their new homeland while minimizing their financial risks in a punishing and harsh environment. Many kibbutzim were founded by settlers from the former Soviet Union, who were either comfortable with or accustomed to life under communism and socialism. Life in the kibbutzim during Israel’s first few decades is now unthinkable to many Israelis: children were raised in nurseries, and slept separately from their parents; residents did not receive salaries, but instead shared all of the available resources; and all three meals were eaten communally -- not unlike university dormitory living.

The kibbutzim were instrumental in transforming Israel’s economy from what was best described as a struggling developing country well into the 1960s to one of the world’s most dynamic societies with per capita income ranked between New Zealand and Japan. Israel, with its population of 8 million, now has more tech companies than any place else on Earth other than Silicon Valley. The country boasts the highest number of scientists per capita in the world. And investments in infrastructure and technology has turned a once-parched country into a net water exporter.

But this progress, which has transformed Israel into more of an extension of Western Europe than one similar to its poorer Middle East neighbors, has led to a change in life on the kibbutz for many Israelis. One example is Kibbutz Hatzerim, a 90-minute drive south of Tel Aviv and a short drive from Beersheba, the Negev Desert’s largest urban center. This 70-year-old community, one of many kibbutzim that launched across Israel during the twentieth century, was once a typical farming commune. But a Hatzerim engineer became intrigued at the site of a huge tree in the middle of the desert that had long thrived with no obvious water source nearby – and his tinkering led to Netafim, now a billion-dollar company. This kibbutz still produces agricultural products such as jojoba oil, but water technology drives this community's economic success.

The industrialization of the kibbutzim has been one of the triggers behind Israel’s spectacular growth, but many old-timers have lamented the shift from idealism to pragmatic capitalism. Meanwhile, many younger Israelis have shunned life on the kibbutz and moved to the cities. And why not? After all, living within a kibbutz is often like herding cats. As anyone who lives in a condominium and has been involved with an unruly homeowners association (HOA) in the U.S. can testify, managing a place where equality is preached but where personalities often clash can often present a day-to-day headache.

But as explained to TriplePundit during visits to some of Israel’s kibbutzim, a slow shift is underway as more Israelis are considering moving back to these communities. One reason is economics: the cost of living in many of Israel’s cities makes it more difficult for millennials to get ahead, and starting a family can make life even more complicated. Furthermore, many kibbutzim councils realize that new blood and new ideas can help revitalize them. More kibbutzim are open to having families inside, and will even allow them to work elsewhere and keep their income. Other kibbutzim, however, consider that income part of the community’s treasury. For example, one executive we met is married to a medical professional that sees patients outside the kibbutz – when those patients are billed, payments are directed to the community, not the doctor.

The fact is that there are many benefits to living on a kibbutz, which is why tourism organized to visit them is still popular across the world. Citizens from Korea to Latin America, whether they are indulging in a “gap year” or just want to see the world, will live and work in a kibbutz for months, and even longer, at a time. “Building community” has often become a repetitive cliché, but there is something to be said about knowing your neighbors, dining with them, and taking part in everything from the most mundane and annoying chores to reaching consensus on long-term financial and infrastructure decisions. Many kibbutzim, even if they are now manufacturing the most sophisticated industrial and electronic equipment, still produce much of the food consumed on the premises. Cars are often shared; a clinic meets many of these communities' health care needs.

Today there are approximately 270 kibbutzim across Israel. Around 75 percent operate on a model called mitchadesh (renewing), in which the communities generate and keep their income. The rest adhere to the traditional model, shitufi (collective living), which compensates all members equally, regardless of their daily work. Not everyone who lives on a kibbutz (such as commuters or short-term visitors) is a member – those who are members have an equal vote when these communities meet to vote on decisions.

One example of a kibbutz that melds these communities’ ideals with practical modern day life is Kibbutz Neot Semadar. Located in the Arava Desert, the arid stretch of land wedged between Egypt and Jordan, this kibbutz is relatively young, founded in 1989. Surrounded by pink and mauve mesas, Kibbutz Neot Semadar defines the term “oasis” with its lush gardens, olive trees and vineyards. A massive solar field adjacent to the site powers its operations, which includes a winery, a whimsical art center and workshops that emphasize a wide range of topics from self-awareness to resilience.

Many of the residents who founded Kibbutz Neot Semadar still live there – and they were involved with everything from laying the art center's terrazzo floors to raising the goats that produce the most sublime dairy products. About 90 children live here, but they live with their parents, not separate quarters; and Kibbutz Neot Semadar pads its bottom line with a guesthouse that welcomes tourists who are exploring the region’s spectacular natural parks or are scuba diving at the resorts along the nearby Gulf of Aqaba.

Can these ideas scale worldwide? The kibbutzim are indeed a system that is unique to and largely defines Israel. But there are elements that can be applied elsewhere, and in fact, some ideas have already morphed into practices that have become popular around the world. Think of community gardens, which have bonded communities; and even crowdfunding, which allows people to invest in ideas with minimal risk, knowing that they are a contribution to the public good and more sustainable development. In a more crowded world with limited resources, living closely together as part of the environment could become the most viable option in both urban and rural areas.

Image credit: Shani Sadicario

Editor’s note: Vibe Israel is funding Leon Kaye’s trip. Neither the author nor TriplePundit were required to write about the experience.

By Ed Quevedo

“May we proceed based upon an understanding that all economic activity is actually initiated by gift, just as each of our breathing lives is supported at the outset by the gift of nourishment.

That fluid gift is transformed through human development into capacities for new ideas and recognition of the needs of others.

This is a snapshot of how a healthy culture contributes to economic renewal.”

John Bloom, Senior Director, Organizational Culture, RSF Social Finance - The Genius of Money (2009)

Let us say, for discussion purposes, that you are a social entrepreneur, with a heart of gold and a brain motivated by service to society.  You have the technical skills, business savvy, capable team, and passion to launch a new venture that will meet an unquestioned and essential human need overlooked by the current market.  What is your fundamental need?  What is the oxygen that will fuel your idea and make it real, present, and powerfully transformative?  Access to capital.

Access to capital is such an essential concept, that we often forget its many forms, implications, and sources.  Access to capital is, at its core, not an economic concept.  When you draw your every breath, respond to your hunger for food and nourishment, and seek the affection, love, and companionship of others, you seek access to capital.

Oxygen and physical nourishment are, for humans, the most fundamental of many forms of natural capital. Social capital is also central to our existence as healthy, fully realized beings.

Financial capital is a notion derived from, not superior to, these other forms of capital. After all, without natural capital and social capital, we as a society would never have come to create financial capital. Thinking, breathing people, working in concert, and therefore served by natural and social capital, derived the notion of financial capital as a way of facilitating exchange in the post-bartering world of the industrial age.

In the “modern world,” however, financial capital has become dominant. It drives news headlines, has hijacked our politics and policy, and makes wage slaves of the best of us.  Most assuredly, financial capital has a more beneficial and human side – consider the work of organizations such as RSF Social Finance, The Triple Bottom Line Fund, and many other non-profit and even for-profit institutions and organizations working to make financial capital a force for good in the world.

Unfortunately, however, the ecosystem of financial capital is dominated by large, faceless, predatory, and sometimes dysfunctional organizations, rules, and practices.  And it is unavoidable.  Even for those of us who try to practice responsibility in our financial dealings, it is virtually impossible not to become entangled in one way or another in the web of traditional finance.  Mortgages, electronic funds transactions, purchasing various forms of energy, and event buying concert and music venue tickets:  these and dozens of other transactions of every-day life lead us into the grip of traditional financial institutions.

There is, of course, an even darker side to this reality.  For the millions of Americans and billions of other folks around the world who seek a better life without the luxury of practicing “sustainability,” the lack of access to financial capital means disease, hunger, a life embittered, and by extension, unmeasured suffering and ultimately millions of unnecessary deaths each year.

The notion of for access to financial capital is accordingly in need of a fundamental rethink.  One of the many options we have to mainstream the important work of institutions like Beneficial State Bank, Triodos Bank (about which I have written previously in these “pages”) is public banking.  Through public banking, access to (financial) capital becomes a reality not only for progressives seeking sustainable banking alternatives, but perhaps more importantly to all who would participate in the economy, including impoverished and marginalized communities and families.

Now more than ever, with an incoming federal administration that looks set to impose some of the most regressive financial and social revisions in decades, we would all be well served to better understand public banking and its promise for improved access to capital.  The Public Banking Institute (PBI), one of the few organizations working exclusively in this domain, defines public banking as:

“Banking operated in the public interest, through institutions owned by the people through their representative governments. Any governmental body which can meet local banking requirements may, theoretically, create such a financial institution.”

Public banking is distinguished from private banking in that its mandate begins with the public's interest. Privately-owned banks, by contrast, have shareholders who generally seek short-term profits as their highest priority. Public banks are able to reduce taxes within their jurisdictions, because their profits are returned to the general fund of the public entity.

When the public interest demands, the mission of public banks is to respond immediately, to assure the long-term prosperity of the community.”

In short, public banks are owned by public agencies such as states and communities, driven by community need and well-being, not profit.  With this very different incentive structure, public banks are in a much improved position to create affordable credit, and by their nature operate with greatly reduced risk.

They engage in no highly risky, complex, or artificial marketplace investments. Public banks are much better equipped to  stabilize potential credit crises, decreasing volatility rather than feeding it, as private banks tend to do.

Public banks are also much better positioned to invest in infrastructure and create jobs by partnering with local and hyper-local home-grown businesses to fund and grow them.  The risk profile, or so-called underwriting guidelines, of public banks, are keyed to public good, not return on investment.

When we consider the brutal impact of the wealth gap in the U.S., the increasing economic stratification of our society, and the urgent and unmet needs of our inner cities and impoverished fellow citizens, public banking on a broad or even intermediate scale can solve many ills.  Startlingly, in the vast, broad territory of the U.S., there is exactly one public bank: The Bank of North Dakota (BND).

BND was founded in 1919 to guarantee a ready and dependable supply affordable credit of the State’s farmers, ranchers, and businesses.  To give you a sense of the striking difference between the benefits and incentives that move a public bank vs. conventional private banks, consider these facts:

• From the spring of 2010, in the shadow of the global banking and financial collapse, North Dakota was the only U. S. state with a major budget surplus;
• The State maintained the lowest unemployment and default rates in the U.S; and
• It had the most community banks per capita, suggesting that the presence of a state-owned bank has not only not hurt but has helped the local banks.

BND further invigorates the State’s economy by making available low interest loans to students, existing small businesses and start-ups. It partners with private banks to provide a secondary market for mortgages and supports local governments by buying municipal bonds.

As a public bank, BND is capitalized by all of the State’s assets to capitalize the BND. By law, the State must also deposit all of its revenues in the Bank. BND issues dividends to its only shareholder - the people of the State. In the past decade, a very small population and a middling level of economic turnover, BND has returned over $300 million to the State’s general fund.  This supports the State’s healthy and regular annual surpluses and consequently eliminates pressure for drastic tax increases or spending cuts for vital public services.

It is a truism that, without access to affordable credit such as that which can be uniquely provided by a public bank, average Americans who do not have substantial wealth cannot make the critical investments in their families and local businesses required to provide a prosperous future.  Families with below-average incomes are even more damagingly disadvantaged.  They are driven to rely on pay-day loan companies, pawn shops, and other less than sterling sources of access to financial capital, and may even struggle to set up and maintain a simple checking account.

So – why aren’t there more public banks, especially in progressive states like California, Oregon, and New Jersey?  This is a complex question beyond the scope of the present article.  But one courageous and intrepid California municipality, the City of Oakland, voted in November to study the feasibility of setting up a public bank to be owned by the City.  The resolution also directed city staff to cooperate with other local jurisdictions to explore establishing a regional public bank.

Encouragingly, other cities such as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Santa Rosa, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, are also considering establishing public banks.  As we enter a new year, one filled with promising and potentially troubling transitions, you might consider adding to you New Year’s resolutions list to a commitment to become involved in advocating for public banking where you live.

On its face, public banking is not immediately the most inspiring or charismatic of pursuits.  But burnished by best practices in responsible marketing and the right kind of advocates, it might one day become a growing trend rather than a market oddity.  It is not a perfect model, but it strikes this writer as an essential and potentially transformative part of a wholesale strategy to, as I have put it elsewhere, build an economy worthy of our affection.

_______________________

Ed Quevedo is an educator and writer, and directs programs in Peace & Social Justice and Future Economies as a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future.

 

Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel has provoked a flood of public discussion in a few short months. Best known as a co-founder of PayPal and board member of Facebook, the formerly reticent Thiel burst into the spotlight last May, when his secret role in the Hulk Hogan "sex tapes" scandal was revealed. While that was still simmering, Thiel emerged as an avid supporter of Donald Trump for President, and he leveraged a reported $1.25 million campaign donation into a key slot in the President-elect's transition team.

This is all quite interesting, but it obscures some issues surrounding Palantir, another Peter Thiel venture that is only just beginning to break into the mainstream spotlight.

Peter Thiel, Palantir and greenwashing

For the record, Peter Thiel has not been involved with PayPal for many years. The company was sold to Ebay back in 2002.

Among Thiel's current ventures is the data mining startup Palantir, which counts the U.S. government among its chief clients. That includes the National Security Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation among a baker's dozen of federal agencies.

Back in 2013, Forbes was among the few traditional media organizations to highlight the implications of Palantir's business model when it took note of the startlingly rapid growth of this "CIA Funded Data Mining Juggernaut:"

The biggest problem for Palantir's business may be just how well its software works: It helps its customers see too much. In the wake of NSA leaker Edward Snowden's revelations of the agency's mass surveillance, Palantir's tools have come to represent privacy advocates' greatest fears of data-mining technology -- Google-level engineering applied directly to government spying.

With its heavy reliance on taxpayer-funded contracts, the Palantir business model is a little ironic in the context of Thiel's active promotion of the libertarian ideal of small (or no) government.

Thiel caused a stir in 2009 with the publication of his "Education of a Libertarian" essay in the top Libertarian journal Cato Unbound. Among other things, he argued that freedom and democracy are incompatible, and that technology must carve out a "new space for freedom."

That space, Thiel argues, can only be carved out in three areas, one of which is cyberspace (the other two options are outer space and the open seas).

Thiel backed up his words with major financial support for the Libertarian presidential candidacy of Ron Paul in 2012.

The Palantir connection becomes more than a little ironic when you consider that Thiel's version of libertarianism comes with a heavy dose of talk about the individual right to privacy.

Intentional or not, Thiel's public persona as a dedicated libertarian has masked the anti-libertarian potential embedded within his own company's signature technology.

It's a twist on the familiar practice of greenwashing, in which a company promotes itself as environmentally responsible without actually doing much to back up that claim -- or, in some cases, while actively engaged in environmentally destructive practices.

Peter Thiel exposed

For Peter Thiel, it seems that libertarian privacy principles are only to be understood in the context of media scrutiny.

That's a profound misrepresentation of the libertarian concept of individual rights, but until recently the media has given him a pass on that.

Last week, Vanity Fair noted that Thiel's high profile role in the Trump transition is ripe with conflict of interest issues:

...the billionaire venture capitalist serves on the boards of several private-sector tech companies, and has early-stage investments in other start-ups like Lyft, Airbnb, and SpaceX through his venture-capital firm, Founders Fund...

Vanity Fair also noted that Palantir raises "the biggest, and the most troubling" red flags. That is backed up by a report in The Verge, which describes the company's role in partnering with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency on a system of profiling algorithms called the Analytical Framework for Intelligence:

...the system draws from a variety of federal, state, and local law enforcement databases that gather and analyze often-sensitive details about people, including biographical information, personal associations, travel itineraries, immigration records, and home and work addresses, as well as fingerprints, scars, tattoos, and other physical traits.

Defining diversity down

Thiel's reported proclivity for fascism and white nationalism adds another layer of concern to the red flag reported by The Verge.

Last month Triple Pundit described how Peter Thiel has defined diversity down to include white nationalism. Basically, Thiel has been making the argument that "different" views should be respected on an equal footing, not judged. That concept seems to be gaining some traction among the Silicon Valley set.

As the campaign season heated up, Facebook co-founder and fellow board member Mark Zuckerberg wrote a note to employees, after word bubbled up that the rank and file would like to see Thiel booted out.

Zuckerberg argued that Thiel should remain with Facebook despite his views, because diversity is a good thing:

We care deeply about diversity. That’s easy to say when it means standing up for ideas you agree with. It’s a lot harder when it means standing up for the rights of people with different viewpoints to say what they care about. That’s even more important.

So far Facebook has not received much in the way of blowback from the media. It's another story with IBM, which is weathering the aftereffects of an open letter that CEO Ginni Rometty penned to Donald Trump on November 15.

Without any reference to toxic rhetoric by Trump and his high profile supporters during the campaign, Rometty leads off with this observation:

Last Tuesday night you spoke about bringing the country together to build a better future, and the opportunity to harness the creative talent of people for the benefit of all...

I am writing to offer ideas that I believe will help achieve the aspiration you articulated and that can advance a national agenda in a time of profound change.

IBM employees responded last week with an online petition and list of demands calling on the company to re-affirm its core value as "global family without borders." The petition garnered 500 signatures within its first few days of operation.

Topping the list of a demands, petition signers want the option to exempt themselves from the kind of "extreme vetting" operation that Palantir enables.

The backlash is also building up to the point where it threatens to re-expose IBM's role in the Holocaust, a history that resonates ominously in the Palantir business model.

Under its former iteration as the International Business Machine company, IBM provided Nazi Germany with tabulation machines called Holleriths. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museusm, Holleriths were commonly used throughout Europe for processing census data beginning in the late 1800's.

In the wrong hands, this seemingly benign tool became deadly:

The information from the 1939 census helped Nazi official Adolf Eichmann to create the Jewish Registry, containing detailed information on all Jews living in Germany. The Registry also recorded the names of Jews in Austria and the Sudetenland of western Czechoslovakia, which were occupied by German troops in 1938 and 1939 and made part of the Reich (German empire). Nazi racial ideology and policies did not stop at Germany's borders.

With few exceptions, tech company leadership has been largely silent over Trump's plans for information-gathering over the next four years.

In the latest development, Peter Thiel apparently played the key role in organizing a December 15 meeting of leading tech CEOs with the President-elect. None of them had anything to say afterwards, though Recode managed to assemble some unattributed snippets together. Here's a sample:

We definitely gave up a little stature now for possible benefit later,” said one source, noting that it was the price of being a public company with a tweet-happy new U.S. leader. “It’s better to be quiet now and speak up later if we have to, and save our powder.”

It looks like tech employees aren't waiting around for leadership to "speak up later." Aside from the IBM petition, thousands of tech workers have committed to action steps and advocate for resistance through neveragain.tech, a project that grew out of the inaugural meeting of the Bay Area Tech Solidarity organization.

Photo (cropped): Hollerith machine by Marcin Wichary via flickr.com, creative commons license.

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By Alison DaSilva

As we take stock on the past 365 days, there's no doubt that 2016 has been a turbulent time for business and society. From the ballooning refugee crisis to unexpected political outcomes from all corners of the globe, the world is a different place than just 12 months ago.

Yet with this instability has come progress and awakening. Many organizations took the opportunity to redefine what “responsibility” looks like – beyond just material issues or products and services – to what a company’s larger role in society could be. We saw moments in time grow into movements, employees roll up their sleeves on sustainability, and technology play a leading role in communicating to consumers.  As the year draws to a close, our firm, Cone Communications, evaluated a years’-worth of corporate social responsibility (CSR) trends to bring you the top 10 trends of 2016:

1. Companies Lead With Values: As issues reached a boiling point, we saw some companies take a stand on items that likely won’t be found in a CSR report. Rather, these companies – and a handful of outspoken CEOs – used their bargaining power to sway decision makers and put a stake in the ground on important topics.

   For example, just two weeks after announcing expansion plans in North Carolina, PayPal released a statement saying it would halt the plans due to legislation the company felt invalidated protections of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens. Meanwhile, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff has been a vocal proponent of equal pay – even going so far as to corner other CEOs into making similar commitments, and Ben & Jerry’s* founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, were arrested with hundreds of other activists as part of the Democracy Awakening’s protest on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

2. Reporting Gets Entertaining: This year marked a new phase in the life of CSR reports as companies transitioned from the 200-page PDF to heightened focus on storytelling, digital and interactive experiences.

   Heineken took the reins this year by enlisting Dutch rapper and spoken word artist, Kevin “Blaxtar” de Randamie, to deliver its sustainability report as a dynamic two-minute video entitled, “Let’s Be Frank.” The video was accompanied by an online game where users could play through the brewer’s CSR commitments. Patagonia’s report eschewed the text-heavy standard for a high definition image-laden report focusing on action and the outdoors.

3. Employees Drive Sustainability: While companies have long understood the value employees play through contributing to community efforts, 2016 was the year companies put employees to work in driving positive impact on sustainability issues.

   This was the case for Virgin Atlantic. The airline saved around 21,000 tons of carbon and $44 million just by educating pilots on what behaviors could save fuel and then asking this group to participate in a fuel-saving challenge. Starbucks’ landmark FoodShare program launched in March was the result of employees urging the company to reconsider the pounds of unsold perishable food thrown away every day.

4. VR Transforms CSR Experiences: Virtual reality (VR) was all the rage this year and savvy marketers realized its amazing application to help consumers become fully immersed in important issues – and ultimately change behavior.

   TOMS allowed consumers to take “A Walk in Their Shoes” by using VR to share the moment a consumer met the beneficiary of his one-for-one purchase. Diageo employed VR to put consumers in the passenger seat alongside a drunk driver in a shockingly real video to emphasize the power of choice while the National Autistic Society showed what it’s like to be a child with autism in a crowded mall to bring empathy for people living with the disorder.

5. CSR Data Goes Big: As the world becomes increasingly connected, CSR innovators are seeing the vast and exciting opportunity in big data. Now, companies are leveraging massive amounts of data to have an even clearer picture of complex social and environmental issues – and create a more transparent supply chain.

   In addition to Google’s $1 million commitment to help fight Zika virus, the tech goliath is also embedding a team of Google engineers and data scientists to help UNICEF organize the data they collect to make the massive amount of information easier to work with. Chicken of the Sea is harnessing data to bring more transparency to consumers’ dinner plates. The seafood brand launched a digital traceability initiative that allows consumers to enter a code to learn a wealth of information about their can including the region the fish was caught, the method used and even the vessel that caught the fish, with start and end dates of the trip.

6. Trash Talk Goes Mainstream: Talking about garbage may have once been taboo, but what started with “Inglorious Vegetables” has now gone mainstream, with companies of all industries talking about how to address the growing waste problem.

   As a result of a Change.org campaign, Whole Foods joined the ugly vegetables trend with a partnership with Imperfect Produce. The company test-drove flawed fruits and veggies in Northern California stores this April. At the FIRST* LEGO League Arabia Open, the “TRASH TREK Challenge” was launched, tasking children in grades 4 to 8 to research a waste-related problem, then develop a solution and design, build and program a robot to solve for the issue. Meanwhile, trash became treasure with Timberland’s* new partnership with responsible fabric manufacturer Thread, turning recycled bottles into footwear.

7. Tech Drives Responsibility: As technology becomes more engrained into our everyday lives, it is making it even easier for consumers to make sure their dollar makes an impact – from where we buy to how we give.

   The newest evolution in technology helping consumers make responsible shopping decisions comes from DoneGood, a Google Chrome or Firefox extension that suggests more sustainable options right within the online browsing experience. We also saw giving become easier thanks to technology, as both YouTube and Apple Pay launched new donation add-ons.

8. Employee Engagement Evolves From Tactic to Experience: When it comes to how employees want to engage in CSR initiatives at the office – expectations have matured beyond the one day of service or matching donation. Employees want to see, feel and touch engagement experiences and find meaning in activities within and outside the office.

   Sabbaticals were all the rage in 2016. In an effort to attract and retain Millennial talent, Citigroup has created a new immersive service experience – allowing junior bankers to work on a four-week microfinance project in Kenya. In a similar move, boutique investment bank Moelis & Co. is now offering four weeks paid sabbatical for employees to pursue a passion area after five years with the company.

9. Refugees Get a Helping Hand: As the refugee crisis continues on a global scale, companies are playing a unique role,  helping to provide desperately needed aid and assistance while raising awareness for this complex situation.

   Ikea created an immersive in-store experience by transforming one of its showrooms into a Syrian refugee home – allowing consumers to see what refugees call “home.” The replica also included Ikea’s trademark branded hangtags, but this time with a call to action to donate to the Red Cross. LinkedIn leveraged its unique business model for its initiative, “Welcoming Talent.” The company created a special website to help refugees in Sweden find employment opportunities to match their unique skill sets.

10. Moments Become Movements: 2016 marked the year of big, bold commitments from brands that took on a life of their own, going from a moment in time to a growing movement.

    REI’s #OptOutside campaign grew beyond the confines of the company this year when it asked government agencies, nonprofits and even other brands to join in by closing their doors on Black Friday and inviting employees and consumers to spend the day outside. The outdoor retailer enlisted more than 275 organizations to participate and garnered over 6 million commitments to #OptOutside. The movement to protect bees gained speed this year with more than three major organizations creating consumer-facing campaigns to raise awareness for colony collapse disorder, including Burt’s Bees as well as General Mills and its bee-fronted brand Honey Nut Cheerios. Two even landed on the same hashtag for their efforts: #BringBacktheBees.

As our world continues to face ever-evolving and complex social and environmental issues, 2017 will be anything but predictable. Companies will need to lead with values, encourage disruptive innovation and look to all stakeholders in and outside of organizations to make progress. There is no question that business will be held to a higher standard in the future as stakeholders expect companies to not only operate responsibly but also act as a leading force for positive change in society.

Want to know what’s new and trending in CSR and cause marketing all year long? Sign up for Cone Communications’ Prove Your Purpose newsletter and TriplePundit’s Weekly Dispatch newsletter for the latest innovations and insights.

*Cone Communications client

Alison DaSilva is the Executive Vice President of Cone Communications’ CSR Research and Insights group, where she is responsible for tracking and identifying trends to keep our clients on the leading edge of CSR. For the last 17 years, Alison has led the development of Cone’s groundbreaking benchmark research, exploring the attitudes and behaviors of American consumers, employees and executives towards corporate involvement with social issues and responsible business practices. With this in her arsenal and the learnings gleaned from years of program development, Alison collaborates with account teams to keep clients at the forefront of this rapidly changing arena.