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 This previously unpublished research illustrates the business benefits from being a force for good company, including: Motivational benefits of employee volunteering; Statistical evidence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.

The Ubuntu Declaration is the product of the recent Emergency Congress, with Rights and Humanity, the South African Human Rights Commission and Tomorrow's Company. The Declaration sets out a holistic and systemic policy framework for what to do now to protect the world's poorest peoples, how to reform the global financial system, and how to create the conditions for sustainable development and effective growth. It starts by recognising  - as we would describe it - the importance of 'the triple context': that we all need to bring the economic, social and environmental systems into balance. The Ubuntu declaration consciously and clearly argues for the alignment of the development agenda alongside tackling the climate crunch, the credit crunch  and the threat to  biodiversity.   Amongst other things It calls for one third - $750bn - or current world stimulus packages to be focussed to the green agenda: recongising that this will be the most efficient in creating jobs and building a...

   “A lack of long-term stewardship by company heads and shareholders is at the heart of the current financial crisis, an influential think-tank says in a report published on Wednesday. Tomorrow’s Company, whose previous research has helped shape UK company law, urges the government to understand better the effects of the growing “casino economy”, where activities such as derivatives trading are often far removed from the real economy activity to which they theoretically relate. The report warns against the search for scapegoats for the current crisis and says that it is wrong to attack private equity, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds for irresponsibility, noting that different shareholders perform different functions. However, it condemns the practice of borrowing shares for voting purposes and asks if investors need to toughen up their engagement to change company behaviour or divest holdings in companies with particular shortcomings. Mark Goyder, Tomorrow’s Company...

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,...

We argue that tomorrow’s company will be operating in an era and a new business environment in which value creation depends on environmental and social issues as much as on economic ones – what we call the ‘triple context’. More than ever, companies will need to think in terms of their own sustainability and that of the ecosystems and communities in which they operate. We believe this means that companies should think afresh about what they mean by ‘talent’. At present most companies reserve the word ‘talent’ for high fliers who are destined to become top executives or high-level specialists. This is too narrow a view for a world with multiple challenges, needing people with a wide range of capabilities. Talent, we argue, is all around us waiting to be unleashed. Contrary to popular belief and practice we argue that ‘talent’ should not be seen as a rare quality, but a diverse, multifaceted one that exists in everyone; it is abundant. It is a nice quirk of the English language that...