As stated by SEC Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar diversity in executive boards leads to better performance.  As investors apprehend this information, they actively seek for companies with diverse boards. Companies are now catering to the wants of investors and ‘injecting’ diversity into their board of directors.

To sell the image of diverse boards, companies themselves must believe diversity exists in management. This misperception is evident in Canadian Board Diversity Council’s second annual report card. Utility companies and oil companies both believe they are diverse and their boards comprise of 21.7% of women and 6.6% women respectively. With such a wide range of difference both cannot be diverse.

This misperception can be explained by the contrast effect. Gas and oil companies had virtually no women a few years back and the addition of a few may provoke the image of diversity relative to the company’s past. However, diversity insists adding more than a few individuals. The misperception created by the contrast effect will guide investors into viewing a company as diverse. Consequently, the incentive for companies to diversify will be reduced, as investors are deceived. This will once again halt the integration of diverse, new ideas into corporate boardrooms.

Companies believe boards are diverse, even when they aren\’t Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Companies+believe+boards+diverse+even+when+they+aren/5724803/story.html#ixzz1e24QwGAA

Obese and smoking employees of Wal-Mart are facing the wrath of its low-cost strategy. Smoking creates a greater burden on Wal-Mart’s health insurance bill; therefore, it has decided to shift that cost to it smoking employees by charging surcharges as high as $2000 per year. These high, insensitive premiums may be seen as an incentive to quit, but in many circumstances, it will lead to the cancellation of health insurance and further endanger the employee’s life.

If Wal-Mart is just protecting its bottom line, analogously, governments can impose rash premiums for polluting. Governments are concerned with the welfare of society and to protect the environment it should charge Wal-Mart outrageous fees for each ton of C02. Similar to Wal-Mart’s policy, government should require Wal-Mart to reduce its pollution to a bare minimal level before it qualifies for lower premiums.

To avoid paying premiums Wal-Mart has shipped its operations overseas, but employees cannot simply quit in this volatile economic environment. This surcharge is not promoting healthy lifestyles because it is not “part of a broader effort to help them quit” such as anti-smoking programs. It is just another Wal-Mart ploy to cut costs as the expense of society.

The Smokers’ Surcharge

Loblaw Companies Limited for years has been trying to redesign their strategies to take on increasing competition in the retail food industry. Using cost leadership strategy, Wal-Mart has snatched some of Loblaw’s market share. Rising costs and a stagnating retail food market led Loblaw to diversify the products and services that it offers.

Due Loblaw adopting International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), it was able to have more comprehensive reporting for each department such as retail food and financial services. As a result Loblaw sees its financial services as the most lucrative option for their capital.

Their strategy to increase other services has lead to a heavy investment of company profits in order to build the management information systems (MIS) required for the financial services. As a result, company executives have warned of overall lower returns for the next few quarters. Inevitably, this will deflate the stock price of Loblaw but once they have established the infrastructure for the financial services will the stock price return to its previous value?

The future for Loblaw looks fierce as Metro Inc. strips Loblaw of unit sales, and not to mention the emergence of Wal-Mart and Target next year.

Loblaw gets boost from higher food prices, apparel sales, financial services

Loblaw doubling down in financial services

Metro gaining ground on Loblaw in grocery sales

The notion of greed or self-interest has driven modern economies and now society is facing the ramifications. As stated by Nobel prize-winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, “any successes [financial investors] have are due to luck more than judgment”. Yet, out of greed the big hedge fund managers-which make up a large portion of the top 1%- continue to pay bonuses for their perceived skill. Relative to a plumber, the “hard earned fortune” of Wall Street bankers seem not so hard earned.

However, the root cause of this inequality lies in the system, which allowed it to occur. The loopholes such as carried interest loophole enables the wealthy (hedge fund manager) to contribute less portions of their income to taxes than the average american.The anger not necessarily focused on the individuals in the 1%, but instead to the system, which promotes the accumulation of wealth to a select group. Many of the wealthy individuals mentioned in Paul Thompson’s blog have advocated for higher taxes for the rich including Warren Buffet.

Ethics may not be dead but greed tends to cloud the moral compass of individuals and without proper government regulation greed as we can all agree can cause events such as the housing bubble in 2008.

We need Occupy to help deliver equality

The CSR Blog on Forbes outlines the six institutional logic techniques used by companies as defined by Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Corporations have introduced policy to reflect CSR, but the outcomes are not effectively contributing to society. Though the business may have CSR policies, it fails to become a social enterprise until social responsibility is not integrated into the fabric of its mission. Only then will the policies have perceivable outcomes.

The values, purpose, and employees should be extensions of the mission, in which the company becomes a “vehicle for accomplishing societal purposes and for providing meaningful livelihoods for those who work in them”. Therefore, for companies to become social enterprises, the culture of the work environment must present artifacts of the social purpose, which the company preaches.

Lastly, the traditional view of enterprise as moneymaking apparatuses must be extended toward long-term outcomes rather than short-term profits. Innovative and self-organizing companies will have the resources to explore programs, which benefit society as a whole and not just the company’s yearly profits. A social enterprise will balance its own self-interest with the interest of society as a whole.  In return, the future of the society in which the company operates is more prosperous.

A resounding theme of all business in recent years has been to become “green”. Air Canada (AC) is no exception and in its trek to sustainability has partnered with Zerofootprint, allowing travellers to offset their emissions created by air travel. Customers are essentially paying for their pollution by funding a reforestation program in Maple Ridge B.C organized by Zerfootprint.

As stated in the article, this merely allows the public to free their conscious of guilt without changing the habits. The same can be said for AC, it simply gives AC an image of eco-friendly corporation when, in fact, it has not addressed the problem of carbon emissions produced by their planes.

I remain skeptical about the actual effects of these offsets. How will planting a baby tree today offset the emission of the flight tomorrow? Also, I paid a visit to this reforestation in Maple Ridge and there is no one to maintain the newly planted trees; some had even been stepped on and contorted.

Carbon offsets are being used as a publicity stunt rather than a genuine effort to reduce emissions.

Air Canada’s carbon-offset program takes flight