Just Good Business: The Strategic Guide to Aligning Corporate Responsibility and Brand

by Kellie A McElhaney

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can help companies build customer loyalty, recruit and retain employees, and stand out in a crowded marketplace. But to be most effective, CSR must be intimately connected to the corporate brand—it must reinforce a company’s unique identity and be an integral part of how a company tells its story. How can your company make the most of this potential competitive advantage and business strategy?

Kellie McElhaney, one of the world’s leading experts on CSR strategy, offers a detailed process for seamlessly integrating your CSR efforts into your overall business objectives. “My goal,” she writes, “is not to tell you how to force your CSR strategy to be more authentic. My goal is actually to help you develop a CSR strategy that is authentic because of its natural linkage to your company’s mission, vision, and values.”

Just Good Business lays out a framework of seven principles that help you develop CSR initiatives that make good business sense and tell the world about them in ways that are compelling and memorable. McElhaney offers a wealth of practical advice on implementation, including how to measure the results of your CSR.

McElhaney draws on over ten years of previously unpublished CSR consulting engagements inside companies grappling with developing strategically aligned CSR initiatives. The book’s case vignettes, examples, best practices, and strategic recommendations span a host of industries and sectors and draw upon her work with leading corporations, such as McDonald’s, Nokia, Levi Strauss, Digicel, Birkenstock, Gap Inc., HP, and Pepperidge Farm.

Savvy companies carefully manage their brand in every area. CSR shouldn’t be any different. Just Good Business offers a detailed blueprint that any company can use to ensure that its CSR strategy delivers significant, quantifiable, bottom-line benefits.

Genres: Sustainability, Nonfiction, Business, Environment

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Eny Rebel · Rating 3 out of 5]

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[Rebecca Radnor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book about corporate social responsibility (CSR), only better written, with better examples, and more likely to stimulate you to really think -- and at times it made me laugh (which never hurts). By the end of the book I was cheering and excited about how gosh darn pragmatic the book is not only about how to do CSR but all the things you need to do in order to be successful at it, not only terms of its impact socially, but more importantly in terms of integrating it in a meaningful way into a companies profit motive (which ensures the programs long term viability in a down quarter).

I am about to use it as semester long project for my Ethical Management class, we'll see if the student's like it as much as I did. I was able to reach the author and she's been really helpful in terms of sharing with me her PPTS that she uses in workshops. We'll see how it goes.

[Robin Woodcock · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone interested in the intersection of CSR + brand, this book is a great read. I am interested both in marketing and corporate responsibility/sustainability, so I thought this read had some good anecdotes and company examples. Also talks about the value of CSR to Millenials + women, which is timely and relevant.

[Giada]

must