{"id":6460,"date":"2015-10-02T07:14:55","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T07:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6460"},"modified":"2015-10-04T09:13:45","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T09:13:45","slug":"vws-moral-licence-to-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/10\/02\/vws-moral-licence-to-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"VW's moral licence to trade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/09\/29\/lies-damned-lies-and-vehicle-emissions-data\/\">wrote<\/a> the other day about VW and its emissions troubles. \u00a0All is not gloom for the company, however, as it wins prizes for its Corporate Social Responsibility. \u00a0Indeed, as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/finance\/newsbysector\/industry\/11896546\/Corporate-Social-Responsibility-has-become-a-racket-and-a-dangerous-one.html\">Telegraph<\/a>\u00a0reminds us, VW is\u00a0a \"global leader\" in CSR. \u00a0Maybe, in a <em>future imperfect<\/em> sense, that should be \"once was\"<\/p>\n<p>It notes,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\"Volkswagen was as progressive, inclusive and caring as any multi-national is meant to be these days. \u00a0The\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reputationinstitute.com\">Reputation Institute<\/a>\u00a0recently ranked the company as the 11th best in the world for its CSR work (Google, BMW and Disney were the top three, by the way \u2013 just in case you want to start selling the shares). \u00a0Last year it collected the \u201cGold Medal Award for Sustainable Development\u201d from the non-profit\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/wec.org\">World Environment Center<\/a>, which praised it for its \u201cunderstanding of sustainability as a strategic goal and its exemplary implementation\u201d. \u00a0It won the 2014 policy award for Corporate Social Responsibility for its strategic partnership with the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union. \u00a0Only last week, and rather embarrassingly after the revelations emerged, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index picked it as the overall global winner in the auto industry for its commitment to the environment.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>CSR is about a public licence to operate over and above what's now routinely expected of you as creditable organisation producing quality goods and \/or services:\u00a0a good employer, a fair and prompt tax-payer, a non-polluter, a steward of the Earth, a support to (and non-exploiter of) the vulnerable, and a respecter of law. \u00a0 As VW is finding, all the CSR in the world won't help when you get one of those spectacularly and very publicly wrong. \u00a0Where is the CSR in mis-leading so many people into buying something that doesn't do what\u00a0the they think\u00a0it does?<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I think that VW has lost its moral right to trade.<\/p>\n<p>.......................................<\/p>\n<p>Postscript: here's Edward Hadas on Reuters with a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/edward-hadas\/2015\/10\/02\/vw-shows-two-sides-of-pushy-culture\">comment<\/a> on VW's culture.<\/p>\n<p>\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote the other day about VW and its emissions troubles. \u00a0All is not gloom for the company, however, as it wins prizes for its Corporate Social Responsibility. \u00a0Indeed, as the Telegraph\u00a0reminds us, VW is\u00a0a \"global leader\" in CSR. \u00a0Maybe,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}