A recent Digital Lifestyle Information Survey from online content company Magnify.net reveals that most people, 64.2 percent, say the information streaming toward them has increased by more than 50 percent during the past year alone. A staggering 72.7 percent of them describe this deluge as: “a roaring river,” “a flood,” or “a massive tidal wave.” Not exactly descriptors indicative of an improved quality of life.

“Something happened when the world went all virtual and mouse-driven,” says XEODesign president and mobile game Tilt creator Nicole Lazzaro.  “We gained access to a lot more data and choice, but lost some of the essence of what makes us feel so good.”

Like a growing number of game designers out there, Lazzaro believes passionately that while the digital world grows more crowded and overwhelming to people, games and gamification represent a way to make life more satisfying – prompting us to play, drawing us closer into the present moment, and potentially transforming the way we live, work, learn and create.

“Today, the way that we design tasks, the way we design software, the way we design our spaces and our organizational systems really ignores one of the most important components of human abilities and that’s the emotional component,” Lazzaro says. “What games do better than most other platforms is tap into human emotions – creating opportunities for novelty, challenge, social interaction and meaning.”

Lazzaro’s perspective on play is rooted in science. Research reveals how starting from infancy, basic play behavior helps wire our brains, form our intellectual strengths and anchor our emotions. Data clearly indicates that the more we play – even throughout adulthood – the smarter and more productive we become. That’s why experts contest that play be taken far more seriously as a field of study and integrated more deeply into daily aspects of modern life. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of today’s most innovative companies are already leading the movement toward a play-based society.

For instance, at this year’s Sustainable Brands conference (June 7-10, Monterey, CA) – an annual event targeting socially-minded companies like Nike, Walmart, Starbucks, eBay, HP, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Timberland, Saatchi & Saatchi S and many others – the  “Play On” theme is all about how fun and games can transform cultures, consumption patterns and help make the world a better place.

“There is no doubt that we must continue down the path toward sustainable consumption, and that those brands that crack the nut in learning how to deliver sustainable solutions that respect and delight all stakeholders in both current and future generations will win,” says conference organizer and Sustainable Life Media CEO Koann Skrzyniarz.  “One problem has been that up until now, the vast majority of communication about the importance of sustainable consumption has lacked creativity, and leaned too heavily on guilt and fear, which we believe is counterproductive. One of the things we’re driving home this year is that humor and play can be much more powerful ways to garner attention and prompt behavior change.”

Behavior change is a worthy end goal for any business wanting to encourage support for its products, services or socially responsible initiatives. Yet, for the majority of companies out there, this outcome is an elusive one. Many brands learn the hard way that when it comes to inspiring people to think and act differently about pivotal issues, traditional marketing tactics often fall short.

“The way that most businesses communicate doesn’t move the needle fast or far enough, particularly in the realm of sustainability,” says Saatchi & Saatchi S CEO Judah Schiller. “Every message gets dull after a while. But what games represent is a way to extend the life of a message or a proposition because players actually gain that internal reward of progressing and engaging.”

“We’re all driven by the needs and desires for reward, status, achievement, competition, self expression, altruism,” adds Rajat Paharia, founder and chief product officer at Bunchball, a leading gamification company. “But you look at most websites, applications and programs today, how do they address or leverage those fundamental human needs?  For the most part they’re not.  They’re completely ignoring them, but game designers clearly know how to do this.”

Perhaps that’s why the gaming industry has blown up in recent years, reaching over $60 billion in annual revenues. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Global Entertainment and Media Outlook, the gaming industry’s compound annual growth rate of 10.3 percent exceeds growth rates achieved by the majority of competing entertainment sectors, including movies and music. By 2012, gaming is expected to be a $68 billion business.

“The number of people playing games is huge,” says Michelle Byrd, co-president of Games for Change, the organization behind 3rd World Farmer, Climate Challenge and the soon-to-be-released Facebook game for Half the Sky. “It used to be that you had people who called themselves gamer, but what’s happening now is that games have become so pervasive and the barrier to entry to being a player has come down so dramatically that the opportunity to engage people through social impact games is on the rise.”

“Today, everyone’s a gamer,” adds Richard Tate, vice president of marketing and communications at Hope Lab, a research and gaming organization targeting youth health issues. “Whether it’s Angry Birds or Bejeweled, it’s not just kids online playing World of Warcraft in their dorm rooms anymore. That evolution has really opened up the opportunity for games to shift the way people think about issues beyond entertainment. It extends the potential for games to have a huge social impact.”

The fact is that, owing to their highly emotive and ubiquitous nature, games are having a marked social impact. Take Zamzee, Hope Lab’s latest game designed to promote physical activity amongst young teens. “As we know, young people are increasingly sedentary in their behavior,” says Tate. “Zamzee motivates kids to move around about 30 percent more than they would without the product. That’s equivalent to a marathon a month of running for each kid.”

Additional examples abound. For example, if you own a Wii Fit, you know how fun action combined with positive feedback encourages you to stay in shape. If you’ve ever donated through a crowdfunding site like Kiva or Kickstarter, you’ve been encouraged by leaderboards, badges and metrics to get more involved and ultimately give more. If you drive a Ford, Nissan, GM or Toyota hybrid vehicle, you’ve witnessed the in-dash gaming system tracking your performance and subtly prompting you to improve your driving patterns in order to save gas.

“These are very substantial investments in a core idea, which is that by providing gamified feedback to a user, as they engage with a product, you can subtly shape their behavior,” says Gabe Zichermann, entrepreneur and co-author of Game-Based Marketing. “I think we’re looking forward to an incredibly fun future in which every type of interaction has some game elements in it, and we’re rewarded and positively engaged around all the behaviors that are best for us.”

Saatchi & Saatchi S’s Schiller agrees: “People really want to play,” he says. “They want to have more fun than they have been having lately in their lives, and they want to share those experiences with others. We talk a lot about social media and gaming — the two are intertwined and in the future they are going to play off each other in ways that we can still only imagine.”

In order to better understand the intersection between social engagement and games and where the play movement is headed, Saatchi & Saatchi S recently commissioned both a quantitative survey of two thousand 14-45 year olds in addition to a series of videos highlighting perspectives from industry thought leaders (disclaimer: I created and directed the videos). Both pieces of research will be unveiled at the aforementioned Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey this June.

Fueled by the internet and the public’s growing distain for corporate greed, hacktivism is a trend on the rise. Today’s hacktivists use increasingly clever tactics in order to elevate public debate about the way corporations do business. In more cases than not, they succeed.

“What we do—and what you can do too—is impersonate captains of industry, infiltrate corporate events, give absurd and revealing presentations, and then escape to tell the story in the press, hopefully to the great embarrassment of the target,” say the Yes Men, a group of hacktivists that recently punked the likes of Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Halliburton, Dow, The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the United Nations, among others. “You don’t have to be a James Bond for this. But what you might need is a fake email address and a business card.”

Armed with little other than a fake business card, letterhead and a masterfully worded news release, the Yes Men made a big point 2009 after a U.S. Chamber of Commerce “representative”  dramatically announced during a National Press Club event that the Chamber would be changing its position on climate change policy.

“We believe that climate legislation currently being considered by the U.S. Senate is a great start towards a bill that will spur American innovation, create jobs, and give us all a good chance of survival,” the forged news release said. “We at the Chamber have tried to keep climate science from interfering with business. But without a stable climate, there will be no business.”

The hoax circulated virally on You Tube and mainstream television, calling public attention to the growing number of corporations – including Nike, Apple, Exelon, PNM Resources, PG&E, PSEG and Levi Strauss & Co –  that had distanced themselves from the Chamber as a result of its conservative stance on climate change. But rather than publicly confront deeper issues and heed to the demands of its forward-thinking members, the Chamber filed a lawsuit against Yes Men and insisted that all videos of the hoax event be suppressed.

Perhaps Chevron will decide go the same way. Just last week the Yes Men targeted the company’s glossy new “We Agree” ad campaign with a satirical version of their own. Whereas Chevron’s campaign asks rhetorical questions like: “Should oil companies support the communities they work in?” and “Do oil companies need to get real?” Yes Men’s questions dig deeper and call attention to the company’s controversial past.

“Chevron’s super-expensive fake street art is a cynical attempt to gloss over the human rights abuses and environmental degradation that is the legacy of Chevron’s operations in Ecuador, Nigeria, Burma and throughout the world,” says Ginger Cassady, a campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, which collaborated with the Yes Men on the Chevron campaign. “They must think we’re stupid.”

Judging from Chevron’s own issued statement about the hoax, Cassady might be right. “There are some who are not interested in engaging in a constructive dialogue, and instead have resorted to rhetoric and stunts,” the company says, in full-blown denial of its own use of rhetoric and, yes, stunts.

Federal courts are now beginning to raise questions regarding Chevron’s persistent efforts to manipulate the U.S. legal system for its own gain. In an apparent effort to derail a potential multi-billion dollar environmental lawsuit against it, Chevron has filed discovery lawsuits against 23 people in the United States, including several lawyers associated with the ongoing Ecuador case. Chevron is also accused of submitting inaccurate and misleading translations to U.S. federal courts.

Wrong Answer

Legal antics aside, it is all too commonplace for corporations to respond to hacktivists in a gruff and humorless manner. But very often, such responses backfire. That’s because hacktivists are a persistent bunch. They are a professional and tactical force that leverages real data, overtakes live airwaves and mobilizes the masses. Corporate dissidence just furthers their resolve.

In response to Chevron’s issued statement, the Yes Men recently stepped up their campaign with a mock statement of their own and a plea to followers to post additional spoof print, web and TV ads online. “It’s been working,” the group says. “Search Chevron in the news and all you get is our spoof. Fifty million spent to keep our eyes off Chevron’s dirt… and it all just went down the drain!”

Lost advertising revenues are hard enough to recuperate. But what about lost corporate reputation? Some of the hardest hit companies of late leverage wholesome values, providing an easy target for hacktivists on a mission to elevate standards.

For instance, last month Hershey released its first CSR Report. Less than 24-hours later, labor rights groups Global Exchange, Green America, the International Labor Rights Forum and Oasis USA launched a counter report (convincingly titled “Raising the Bar: The Real Corporate Social Responsibility Report for the Hershey Company”) and accompanying web campaign.

“In the United States, Hershey conjures up innocent childhood pleasures and enjoyable snacks,” the counter report says. “However, halfway across the globe, there is a dark side to Hershey. In West Africa, where Hershey sources much of its cocoa, the scene is one of child labor, trafficking, and forced labor.”

According to Global Exchange, despite the fact that Hershey is a brand that both targets and supports youth through its marketing and philanthropy, the company seems unwilling or unable to adequately address the countless children harmed by its supply chain practices. Whereas competitors including Cadbury and Nestlé have at least made tentative steps toward labor reform, Hershey lags behind.

“Maybe Hershey is unaware of how this story has played out before and that some kind of reform is inevitable,” says fair trade chocolate company Equal Exchange’s Rodney North. “Or perhaps they are cynically stalling and trying to put off real reforms for as long as possible.”

Hershey’s real motive for stalled progress is anyone’s guess. The company has done little if anything to publicly acknowledge labor problems, let alone address the burgeoning online crusade against it.

“Hershey has not responded to any part of our campaign,” says Global Exchange’s Adrienne Fitch-Frankel. “We haven’t gotten a response to our repeated requests for meetings either, which is disappointing since this is a company that’s using child labor and child slavery. Their silence is really quite disturbing.”

Hershey might not be talking, but hacktivists, investors, NGO’s, film-makers, journalists, mothers and even children themselves are. Collectively, these stakeholders tell a convincing story.

You can run. But you can’t hide.

As the webcast beamed out live to an audience of over a thousand viewers, thought leaders including The Economist’s Matthew Bishop, ThomsonReuters’ Chrystia Freeland, UN Global Compact’s George Kell, BSR’s Aaron Cramer, Campbell Soup’s Dave Stangis and GE Foundation’s Bob Corcoran argued about concept that evidently means different things to different people. As moderator of the debate, my intent was to “navigate” the conversation to the point where a “side” would “prevail.” But within the first few minutes, I realized why efforts in this direction were futile.

“What do we mean by corporate social responsibility (CSR)?” asked Karnani. “It’s not just that the terminology is clunky. It is also unclear.”

Indeed, it is unclear. According to a study published by Wiley InterScience, there are approximately thirty-seven different definitions of CSR floating about the business world. This problem is compounded by dozens of competing CSR or sustainability-related measurement and certification programs. Do well-meaning corporations adopt Cradle-to-Cradle or B-Corp standards? Should they join the Global Compact or Social Accountability 8000? Do Fair Trade or Ethical Trade models make the bigger difference? Who knows?

What we do know is that the old-school CSR rhetoric utterly fails to resonate. At least that was something both sides could agree on. “The problem with the rhetoric is that it can create confusion about what a business is doing in it’s core, versus what it likes to talk about or claim public credit for,” said Freeland, who pointed to campaigns issued by BP, PepsiCo and Goldman Sachs as examples of marketing hypocrisy.

Beyond the language and clear instances of greenwashing, however, there was a deeper point to be made, particularly by practitioners on the panel. When so-called CSR is most effective – when it generates so much value for stakeholders and shareholders that corporations cannot afford to stop investing in it – then it is no longer regarded as CSR, but good business strategy. GE’s multi-billion dollar investments in clean energy and affordable health care stand as a testament to this.

“If you label CSR or corporate citizenship as purely a philanthropic activity, then I agree that’s misguided,” said GE’s Corcoran. “[Authentic CSR] is about the core of what a business does, how it does that, and what it sells that is of value, that helps to meet unmet needs.”

Campbell’s Soup’s Dave Stangis agreed. “CSR is there [at Campbell’s] not because it’s nice to do, but because it makes the company better. It takes money from the supply chain, makes us more nimble and drives innovation.”

Still, despite the demonstrable move toward CSR-driven business models, Karnani insisted that corporations have no obligation to solve society’s ills. “That is the role of government regulation,” he said. “Governments are a far more effective protector of the public good than any campaign for corporate social responsibility.”

Here is where a second key distinction lies. It is one thing for corporations to conduct business ethically – trading within boundaries set by law. However, it is quite another thing for corporations to use laws as a strategic compass. Those that do will be playing catch up forever.

There is also the matter of our transformed society. “We don’t live in a world where government’s only job is to set and enforce rules and businesses only job is to sell products and services within those boundaries,” said Cramer. “We live in a transparent world, a globally connected world, a world where civil society plays a big role, where global markets exist but global governance does not.”  Despite the clunky language, today’s CSR is fundamentally about collaboration, which means getting to optimal solutions faster than if we waited around for regulation or business to advance independently, Cramer explained.

“What is really going on here is a struggle to determine what tomorrow’s markets are going to be in a world that’s changing very fast, where all the old boundaries are breaking down,” said Bishop. “Now we’re all workers, consumers, capitalists and voters. And we’re trying to work out the right institutional arrangements to govern in that new world.”

So where does the “Great CSR Debate” leave divided minds? Perhaps right back where they started, or perhaps pondering the following choice: respond to the new reality, or don’t. Stangis put it this way: “This isn’t a debate about right or wrong, winning or losing. For me, it’s about changing the world, one company at a time – or sitting on the outside describing why that can’t happen.”

When companies lose trust, they often lose capital. Case in point: Gulf disaster stocks BP, Halliburton, Transocean and Anadarko each sank between 25 and 45 percent during the past four months. The Goldman Sachs-SEC debacle pushed company shares down by 15 percent, and the Dow down by 130 points. Massey stock plunged 42 percent following a deadly string of safety failures. Toyota shares dropped 16 percent following its massive recall. And as of today, none of these companies has fully rebounded, indicating the markets grow slower to forgive.

“The last couple of years have provided plenty of reasons for a building sense of mistrust,” says Motley Fool’s Alyce Lomax. “Goldman Sachs and BP have become the most recent high-profile examples of the many big institutions whose highly paid managers seem to be only out for themselves. ”

Indeed, the lost faith Lomax describes seems to be the principle reason why many more investors demand greater honesty, disclosure, transparency, and professionalism from corporations – and flee stocks that don’t deliver. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article on the topic: “Small investors’ faith in stocks, which surged in the 1990s, has collapsed since the technology-stock debacle and the Enron and WorldCom scandals of 2000-2002…Investors talk of a growing disillusionment with big institutions, including corporations, government, banks and political parties.”

The reasons for today’s trust deficit are clear enough. What apparently isn’t as clear, particularly to the large corporations whose stocks are affected, is what to do differently in order to set things straight.

For the most part, the corporations mentioned above used a classic crisis management approach: deny, deflect, spin, repeat. Rather than open up, they withheld information. They denigrated critics, blamed others and refused to answer pertinent questions or engage in meaningful debate. They hid behind the veneer of canned statements and corporate rhetoric – with the occasional blunder thrown in.

There is “no evidence” that huge plumes of oil are suspended undersea, said BP. The charges against us will “hurt America,” said Goldman. The safety-related allegations against us are “a big lie,” said Massey. The independent research from Stanford University was “staged,” said Toyota.

When it comes to rebuilding lost trust, propaganda makes a bad problem worse. What improves situations is candor. Candor conciliates, clarifies and cuts through hype. Candor works. It’s the greed of the Twenty-first Century.

“Candor in business – or in any kind of organization – is a rare and wondrous thing,” write Suzy and Jack Welch in their book, Winning. “Rare because so few companies have it. Wondrous because when they do, everything just operates faster and better.”

Consider the success of online retailer Zappos, which grew its recently acquired, billion dollar business in under five years by forging open and honest relationships with people. From its standing invitation to the general public to come tour Zappos’ headquarters to its progressive use of blogs, videos and books – Zappos gives people outside the company an uncensored look inside the corporate culture. It even goes to so far as to share best practices with competitors.

“A lot of companies feel they need to guard the secret sauce,” said Zappos marketing executive Aaron Magness in a recent interview. “We’re very open to talking about our business model and plans with everyone. We’ve learned a lot along the way and made mistakes that a lot of other companies don’t need to make.”

Smart companies like Zappos don’t just aim for candor. They leverage it, invest in it, profit from it, and build new communities around it. For instance, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz blogs freely about what his company and industry does right and wrong, engaging people on all sides of his business. Apparel company Patagonia tracks the social and environmental impact of its products from design through delivery, encouraging customers to buy smarter and contribute to rich discussions. Seventh Generation reveals the full list of ingredients used in its household products, earning customer loyalty and pressuring its industry to follow suit.

Candid companies help restore lost trust and balance to the markets. Rather than telling shareholders or stakeholders what to think, they allow the community to draw its own conclusions, which is precisely why people believe in them. As Seventh Generation’s Jeffrey Hollender said in a recent speech: “You can’t judge yourself to be sustainable or responsible. You can only be judged by others.”

“We can help make a big dent,” Microsoft SVP and General Counsel Brad Smith told a group of journalists, bloggers and industry influencers at the company’s recent Citizenship Accelerator Summit. “These photos live on the Internet forever and every time they are shared or viewed, the children in them are re-victimized. It’s not enough to stop the perpetrators. The real point is getting these images off the Internet.”

In 2009, Microsoft donated a new technology to the NCMEC that has the potential to make the kind of dent Smith talks about. The technology, called PhotoDNA, was initially created by Microsoft Research and then further developed by Hany Farid, a leading digital-imaging expert and professor of computer science at Dartmouth College. Using a unique digital blueprinting technology that has a 98 percent accuracy rate, PhotoDNA finds hidden copies of the worst images of child sexual exploitation known today.

“The [Photo DNA] project is unique in that it is challenging from a technical and engineering point of view, and has the potential to significantly impact the distribution of the horrifying and troubling trafficking of child porn,” says Farid. “It is rare as an academic to work on something that has both of these properties.”

Although major content hosters such as Yahoo and Google enforce content standards as a matter of practice, the manual and human-intensive processes they rely on to remove inappropriate posts are no match for the sheer volume of child porn online today. That is why a technology like PhotoDNA, which is used by Microsoft’s own Bing search engine, is so necessary. But there are other reasons, too.

“This project is also extremely important because nobody else seems able or willing to publicly address it in a significant way,” Farid says. Indeed, PhotoDNA has received scant attention from the mainstream press, probably because it centers on a problem that no one likes to talk about. Were Microsoft purely motivated by publicity, then their safest bet would probably have been to lay low on the chid porn issue. But to the contrary, Microsoft is moving in the opposite direction. With its A Childhood for Every Child campaign, launched as a complementary effort to PhotoDNA and in conjunction with NCMEC, Microsoft urges the public to take a greater interest in this important cause.

According to Farid and others, this is a case where corporate interests effectively – and perhaps even altruistically – work for the greater good. “I am generally cautious of partnering with corporations,” says Farid. “The Microsoft team, however, has been incredibly committed to working on this problem with no obvious financial benefit.”

Whereas Microsoft’s direct financial incentives are still to be determined, the benefits of leveraging the company’s reach and innovation in order to tackle a pervasive social problem are clear enough. “Very few companies can operate at the same level as Microsoft,” Farid says.

Theoretically PhotoDNA’s underlying technology could be applied to various problems related to Internet content – resulting in social and financial upsides. With respect to child porn, Farid says that PhotoDNA is likely only the first in a series of technologies that he and Microsoft will develop to disrupt the flow of images across the Internet. “We will continually enhance PhotoDNA to contend with counter-measures employed by traffickers. We will also extend this work to analyze video.”

Whatever lies ahead, it isn’t any wonder why Farid characterizes his current collaboration with Microsoft as: “the single most important thing that I have done in my career.” Let’s hope he’s not alone – and that more leaders in the technology space will step up to help make the Internet a safer place.

“Company stakeholders from investors to customers to employees to regulators watch the 100 Best Corporate Citizens List closely, and are using it now more than ever to make important decisions,” said Corporate Responsibility magazine publisher Jay Whitehead in a recent press release. “As a result, making the List is worth millions or even billions in increased shareholder and brand value.”

This should be good news for Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Monsanto which, despite their notoriety, have been counted as “Best Citizens” by Corporate Responsibility numerous times. “When someone asks you to define corporate transparency, show them this list,” touts the magazine. But to an increasing number of observers, the transparency seems elusive – as does a clear indication of what the CSR industry stands for.

“Corporate Responsibility magazine’s so-called transparency only extends one layer deep,” observes Sea Change Media executive director Bill Baue. “We can see the categories and weightings, but we can’t see the rationale behind the decisions on actual scoring of company performance.” Baue notes that organizations including Corporate Responsibility collect data from business executives whose names and positions are not revealed, leaving questions about a company’s true impact on society unanswered. “Input from external stakeholders would make the methodology much more robust and credible,” he says.

Baue isn’t the only one questioning the value of CSR performance rankings. As evidenced by blogs and discussion boards across the web, a growing number of people are frustrated by CSR industry lists and the manner in which they are constructed. Some even perceive a pattern of favoritism. “Unlike programs like the Nobel prizes, Macarthur Fellowships, or Economist Innovation awards, the companies that run CSR awards and lists often have an incentive to fix the results,” says Martin Smith, founder and CEO of CSR industry website Just Means. “For instance, Corporate Responsibility magazine makes money from the companies that it rates in its annual list (through sponsorship, registration fees for events, and brand licensing arrangements). This, in any industry, would be seen as a conflict of interest, but in the realm of CSR and business ethics it is purely hypocritical.”

The backlash against CSR industry lists is nothing new. Last year, financial news site 24/7 Wall Street warned global equity investors to take Ethisphere’s results with a grain of salt, indicating: “the basis on which [the list] was put together is a bit naive and it appears to be troubled by several conflicts of interest.” In 2005, green business writer Joel Makower criticized Corporate Knight’s approach, saying: “The rankings only go so far. The whole exercise raises as many questions as it answers.” And when Corporate Responsibility magazine (previously called Business Ethics) first released its list, green media company AlterNet complained: “When one looks at this list, it is easy to be baffled at the real meaning of CSR. It is riddled with companies that have significant blemishes on their record when it comes to environmental matters, labor practices or treatment of customers. The likes of Wal-Mart and Big Oil have not yet made the cut, but that may be only a matter of time.”

Clearly the time has come, as many of the world’s most profitable oil, food, agriculture, pharmaceutical and retail companies are featured on the latest “most ethical,” “best citizen,” “greenest,” and “most sustainable” company lists. Given this fact, one has to wonder: Is the CSR industry completely missing the point? And if so, then so what?

Critics see several downsides to the muddle. “CSR is often too hard for the average consumer to grasp when making a purchasing decision, so companies use lists as stamps of approval,” says Smith. “But unfortunately, not only are the lists misleading for consumers, they actually bring an overall lack of credibility to the entire field of sustainable business.”

Given the importance of sustainable business practices to the future of the planet and its people, this lost credibility is a real concern. “The most vital CSR issue to measure is whether a company is operating sustainably, in the scientific sense,” says Baue. “Environmentally, for example, is the company using natural resources at a rate that allows for the planet to regenerate them sufficiently to provide for future generations?  Unfortunately, almost no companies [on the lists] fully integrate sustainability into their business models, and almost no CSR industry lists consider the sustainability context.”

What Next?

If inclusion on a CSR list translates to “millions or even billions in shareholder and brand value” as Corporate Responsibility magazine indicates, then it stands to reason that some investor and consumer wealth is being channeled in the wrong direction – toward companies that, to Baue’s point, may invest a few pennies in CSR, but make millions or billions of dollars in profits by selling things in ways that take a huge toll on society. This isn’t right. But are CSR industry lists entirely wrong? Not according to some profiled companies.

Dave Stangis, vice president of CSR and sustainability at Campbell Soup Company (which ranked number 12 on Corporate Responsibility magazine’s 2010 list) sees both an underlying purpose and a path forward. “No matter how bad a list is, there is something inherently useful about it,” he says. “It is easy to look at a list and poke holes in it, but what I’m trying to do is use the methodology and questions asked to determine what strategic elements I need to improve inside my company.”

Corporate Responsibility’s analysis, conducted by investment firm IW Financial, assesses 360 data points of public information across seven categories, including human rights, philanthropy and environment. But unfortunately, the same breadth of field that helps companies like Campbell’s to identify strategic weaknesses allows controversial companies to slip through the cracks. “People were up in arms this year, wondering how an oil company like Hess could be considered the tenth best corporate citizen,” says Stangis.  “But in terms of the questions IW Financial asks, such as: Does the company measure its carbon footprint? What violations occurred? How many people were injured? Hess fared well, since they got credit on the disclosures.”

Disclosures aside, many are wondering when CSR industry lists will get around to rewarding companies for creating positive value rather than merely mitigating risk. “These lists should showcase companies that are helping us innovative away from industries like oil, vertically integrated agriculture, and so forth,” Smith says. Stangis agrees: “I think the lists of the future are going to have to better address the issue of strategic opportunity. The real question is: can we finally come up with a list that rewards companies for producing products and services that meet unmet [social and environmental] needs, rather than just minimizing potential damage?”

Surely, that would be something worth recognizing.