Monday, November 24th

I heard a great half-hour documentary programme on BBC Radio 4 last Thursday about one of my – and most other people’s – favourite photographers, Magnum founder Henri Cartier-Bresson. 'Shooting Soviets' told the story of the pioneering photojournalist’s journey to the Soviet Union in 1954 as the first Western photographer to be admitted behind the Iron Curtain after the Second World War.

As was usual for Cartier-Bresson, his aim in the Soviet Union was to photograph the daily realities of life there. The subsequent exhibition of the work he did there represented the first glimpse of real life in a part of the world that had become mysterious and a source of rumour and distrust for those on the other side of the curtain.

The programme investigated the circumstances surrounding his visit and considers its wider significance, with the help of interviews with his widow, Martine Franck, photographers Annie Leibovitz and David Hurn and some of the Russian photographers whose work was directly influenced by Cartier-Bresson's time in and around Moscow.

His images from in and around the Moscow of 54 years ago shown here are the copyright of the photographer and Magnum. You can find many more at the great Magnum site. When you’re there, click Photographers, select his name, then Major Features, and then Soviet Union. And thanks to the BBC’s excellent ‘Listen Again’ service, if you’re quick you still have three days to go there, select Shooting Soviets and listen to the programme yourself.

Monday, November 17th

I’ve been interested in the topic of how businesses can actively contribute to a wider group of stakeholders than their shareholders, customers, employees and suppliers since I conducted research on the topic at the LSE in the early seventies. Terms like ‘welfare capitalism’ were still being used in those days, and it was still the preserve of a few, large, exceptional companies and philanthropic entrepreneurs.

We’ve come a long way since, as evidenced by the hundreds of Annual CSR and Sustainability Reports that are now being published. Good ‘corporate citizenship’ is now well and truly in the mainstream, as is the view that contributing to a better environment and the welfare of society at large does not have to be an altruistic cost for businesses. Nowadays it’s not even seen as just benefiting reputation, enhancing brand value and employee motivation. It can – and perhaps should – be seen as a long-term commercial business investment.

I’m pleased to say that helping companies to effectively communicate their CSR activities to all their audiences has become a speciality for Oake Communications. One of the ways we keep in touch with developments in the corporate citizenship arena is to subscribe to a number of newsletters that I’d like to share with you today.

Ethical Corporation is a London-based independent publisher and conference organiser, launched in 2001 to encourage debate and discussion on responsible business. They've published Ethical Corporation magazine for over five years, and we've been receiving a free monthly e-newsletter from them since the beginning of this year.

CSRwire is a leading source of corporate social responsibility and sustainability news, reports and information. Its members are companies and NGOs, agencies and organizations interested in communicating their corporate citizenship, sustainability, and socially responsible initiatives to a global audience through CSRwire's syndication network and weekly News Alerts. Subscribing to their free ‘news alerts’ provides a useful resource for staying abreast of corporate social responsibility issues. Press releases distributed by companies and non-profit organizations provide insight into emerging business practices. CSRwire is a subsidiary of Meadowbank Lane Capital, which the Wall Street Journal describes as a 'socially responsible investment bank', but they’re sensible not to make their self-promotion too intrusive.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an independent, multi-stakeholder institution that develops and disseminates globally applicable Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. The GRI is an official collaborating centre of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and works in cooperation with the UN’s Global Compact. As we’re frequently called upon to provide CSR communications consultancy and write for clients on the subject, we've been organizational stakeholders of the GRI since 2003. Subscribing to the ‘GRI Monthly News Update’ is free of charge however.

Another organization that promotes CSR tools and standards is what used to be known as the UK’s Institute of Social and Ethical Accountability, now better known simply as AccountAbility. We've been receiving their free monthly newsletter since early in 2002.

“People Planet Profit”, or “P+”, is a Dutch organization dedicated to CSR and Sustainability. It was launched in 2002, and is published by Atticus BV, run by Bob Wennekendonk, who was earlier the publisher of the Dutch advertising and marketing trade weekly ‘Adformatie’. The editor is Jan Bom, who used to be editor of FNV Magazine and ‘Media Manager’ of the ArenA initiative in Amsterdam-Zuidoost. Their free e-newsletters are interesting and often provide alternative viewpoints to the others, but are only available in Dutch at this time.

From 2002 through 2006 we used to receive ‘Biz Ethics Buzz’, the e-mail newsletter from ‘Business Ethics’ magazine. In October last year Business Ethics was incorporated into 'The CRO', a cross-media package for Corporate Responsibility Officers. In addition to The CRO magazine, website and events, they publish a free bi-monthly e-newsletter every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month. The newsletters include news in review, trends and reports, opinion pieces and an overview of upcoming features in the magazine.

A last recommendation before this post takes up the whole page is the free press release service from the World Economic Forum, the organization most famous for the annual meetings they organize in January in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos. What they used to call ‘newsletters’ when we started subscribing in 2003 were always undisguised WEF press releases, and now they call them just that. Since they very often make the news in areas where globalization meets sustainability and corporate citizenship, however, I’ve found them to be a useful resource.