A presentation given in Mumbai, on 17th November 2007 by Pavan Sukhdev, a Managing Director in the Global Markets division of Deutsche Bank AG and member of Green Indian States Trust, about the measurement of sustainability. For more information visit www.gistindia.org

Successfully Engaging Europe's Smaller Businesses in Environmental and Social Issues

Companies are responding to global competition and economic volatility by seeking to be more responsive while lowering costs. This often involves down-sizing and out-sourcing: The very things that tend to destroy the trust of employees. At the same time, workers say they want more flexibility, yet this is often perceived by business as a threat to performance. Could there be a way to reconcile these two apparently opposing forces and transform the debate on flexible working and business performance? Workplace experts Career Innovation facilitated an 18-month ‘Agile Resourcing’ programme with some of the world's most respected employers: Boeing, BT, Marriott, Nokia, Pfizer, PwC, UBS and Oxfam. The resulting ‘Manifesto’ provides principles and examples to help create tomorrow's most agile workplaces. www.CiManifesto.com.

The Green Accounting for Indian States Project has been set up to create new measures of economic success that would be a better yardstick, than conventional GDP figures, to look at the trade off between development and sustainability in the Third World . This monograph is the first in a series that offer arguments relevant to potential force for good companies in South East Asia.  This article looks at why new economic measures are necessary in relation to Indian forests and what these measures could be.

This paper introduces the Trust Enablement™ approach to corporate governance, as a natural and harmonizing counterbalance to prevailing risk management practices.Recent attempts to restore confidence in capital markets have been based largely on risk management practices that place greater emphasis on protecting organizations from further erosion of trust than on establishing higher levels of trust and confidence. Efforts focused on proactively building trust yield better results than recent risk management reactions to mistrust.  A complementary, offensive trust and confidence-building strategy is therefore proposed as more effective for reducing director and officer liability exposures and enhancing business value than a prevailing defensive, risk management strategy.Comparative examples of current governance practices and proposed initiatives when mapped to the Trust Enablement™ model reveal a deficiency in trust and confidence-building governance mechanisms.  Trust Enablement™,...