Word: profiteering
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...huge amount of support among Americans for it, and it actually speaks to this idea - one more question, I have to figure out what it is - this idea that there's a kind of - some corporations talk about now kind of a double dividend, where there's a profit motive, but it also does - gives back to the community. They use this phrase called, like, the triple bottom line, where there's profitability, it's good for the environment, and it's good for the community...
...This is a new idea in a nation where our most iconic economist, Milton Friedman, wrote in 1970 that a corporation's only moral responsibility was to increase shareholder profits. Since 1995, the number of socially responsible investment (SRI) mutual funds, which generally avoid buying shares of companies that profit from such things as tobacco, oil or child labor, has grown from 55 to about 260. SRI funds now manage approximately 11% of all the money invested in U.S. financial markets - an estimated $2.7 trillion...
...loyalty, creating a virtuous circle. With global warming on the minds of many consumers, lots of companies are racing to "outgreen" one another, a competition that is good for their bottom lines as well as the environment's. The most progressive companies are talking about a triple bottom line - profit, planet and people - that focuses on how to run a business while trying to improve environmental and worker conditions...
...long before Obama started talking about how green is the new gold, many corporations discovered that business was about a lot more than a profit-and-loss statement. At first, the corporate stance was defensive: companies were punished by consumers for unethical behavior. In the 1990s, companies like Nike and Walmart were attacked for discriminatory and unfair labor practices. People became alarmed about "blood diamonds," or "conflict diamonds" - gems mined in war zones and used to finance conflict in Africa. More recently, consumers have become concerned about the sourcing of metals used in computers. The nexus of activist groups, consumers...
...Many companies are trying to reconfigure their DNA as profit seekers. Take Walmart. Once the poster child of corporate ruthlessness, a retailer whose business model of undercutting all of its competitors would have been applauded by Friedman, Walmart has resolved to change its way of doing business for the sake of the future of the planet. The company has required its suppliers to reduce packaging to protect the environment and is trying to boost sales of energy-efficient lightbulbs by giving them more shelf space and better placement in stores. In July it announced it is developing a sustainability index...