Word: socialism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Amoco is the largest oil producer in the region, it's not surprising that environmental activists closely monitor its oil-exploration operations there. Last year Paul Wenman spent several weeks trudging around the Alaskan tundra to see just how well the firm had implemented its stated environmental and social aims. But Wenman doesn't work for Greenpeace. He was there at the oil company's expense, as the head of accounting firm Ernst & Young's environmental-services group, conducting an audit no mere accountant could accomplish...
...Amoco is one of a growing number of U.S. and European companies that have begun issuing annual reports that describe not only their financial performance but also details about their environmental and social or ethical behavior. This so-called triple-bottom-line exercise in corporate citizenship is based on the belief that companies owe stakeholders--customers, employees, activist groups, the public--an annual warts-and-all airing of their environmental and societal records, just like the flow of financial data they must provide to shareholders. But since environmental or ethical misdeeds can lead to profit-hammering headlines, the extra information...
Many companies issue environmental- and social-responsibility reports, but those risk appearing to be little more than thinly veiled public relations ploys. For this type of corporate transparency to be of real value, it's essential that the information be thoroughly vetted and verified by independent agents. Increasingly, companies are turning to the Big Five accounting firms that certify their financial books. The auditing of environmental and social reports--and related consulting services--is opening up a whole new area of business for accounting firms, but it does not come headache free. "It's not straightforward financial numbers crunching," explains...
...dividend, but who do understand carbon-dioxide emissions or child-labor scams. Thus, when the London office of KPMG recently formed its new Sustainability Advisory Services (SAS), it hired the core personnel en masse from the Body Shop, the British cosmetics firm that helped pioneer the practice of corporate social and environmental accountability...
Public-interest groups like the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES), based in Boston, are scrambling to issue guidelines and standards. CERES, a coalition of more than 50 investor, environmental, religious, labor and social-justice groups, has launched a global-reporting initiative to set environmental benchmarks for corporate reports. London's Institute of Social and Ethical Account Ability, a lobbying group, has established recommendations for standards for social and ethical reporting and developed accreditation procedures for professionals in this area...