Apart from money, what is it that motivates people at work? There is plenty of rhetoric about ethics and social responsibility, but does it really make a difference to people's performance at work, or their their loyalty? In 2001 the Ci Group (www.careerinnovation.com) conducted a large-scale global survey to answer these questions. This previously unpublished research illustrates the business benefits from being a force for good company, including: Motivational benefits of employee volunteering; Statistical evidence that ‘Ethical Reputation’ is a top driver of staff retention; The ethical motivation profile of industry sectors;  Links between career discussions and retention.

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™,...

This Tomorrow’s Company report seeks to understand the link between innovation and the effective management of risk. The price of poor governance has been increasingly evident through the credit crunch and recession. The report in particular considers the relationship between innovation and difference or 'diversity' on the board;  the effectiveness and role of non-executive directors, and the impact of the criteria of independence; the relationship between innovation and risk; and the impact of quality of leadership - 'the tone from the top'. 

In Tomorrow's Global Talent we asked how leading global companies create value through people and challenged how we think about talent. We argued that talent is abundant, not scarce; that talent exists at every level, not just the high fliers and that the key challenge is how to inspire, engage and harness talent.In our new UK based report, we have talked with business leaders, in the UK and abroad to find out if and how businesses in the UK are coming to terms with globalisation, and with the new drivers of value creation and as a result what this means for talent management in the UK.We argue that as a nation we must pay our way through our one natural resource – the talent of our people, but that we can do this if we have a shared sense of national purpose, one which embraces the world we are a part of.  We argue that we are being held back by a 'fortress Britain' mentality - this could mean huge problems for us as a nation, whilst failing to harness the talent of our people,...

Tomorrow’s Corporate Reporting: A critical system at risk focuses on the systems architecture and the behaviours and values of its stakeholders. Not on the content of the ‘ideal corporate report’. By corporate reporting we mean all the mechanisms by which companies communicate their performance and activity to their stakeholders, with a particular emphasis on the flow of information into the investment community.The study looked at:What aspects of the system are preventing or supporting the effective development of corporate reporting? And what changes are needed to make the system fit for purpose for the future? During the research, 145 individuals provided evidence, were interviewed or engaged through roundtable discussions, representing 118 organisations from 22 countries across five continents. The report explains the components of the current system and highlights that very few, if any, stakeholders see it as a system – rather they see particular pieces of the jigsaw. The...