As you might have gathered from my specialised list on Twitter I am starting to interest myself to the world of Corporate (Social) Responsibility, aka CSR. After a long search, I found the perfect book on this fast expanding field in business.
The author, Timothy J Mohin, is the Director of Corporate Responsibility of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a major electronics company whose processors and graphics cards are most likely inside your own computer.
Mr. Mohin previously worked in similar positions for Intel and Apple for the past twenty years. But besides this impressive resume, the auhor is a full treehugger who cares deeply about the environment and our civilization.
(sidenote, I found him talking many times over about ” the Planet ” which is completely fine, however, I believe we are ” f*cked ” as the late George Carlin noted ).
So Mr. Mohin knows and practices what he is writing about and this is why is book is so interesting. Indeed, who is better at explaining what is CSR than somebody who has done it for decades ?
I believe ” Changing business from the inside out, a treehugger’s guide to working in corporations “is the best guide possible to enter the sector as it is replete with great references that will give you even more occasions to document yourself.
The book tackle -among others :
- the skills you will need to succeed ;
- how to settle a strategy ;
- run a supplier responsibility program, an increasingly important part of the job ;
- communicate about your efforts ;
- relationships with stakeholders or investors as well as your fellow employees.
Mohin’s book comes with many a good advice on how to work in this exciting field.
A minor word of caution however as this book is mostly about large multinational corporations. You won’t find much or anything about medium or small sized companies. But this can be easily understood as the author has always been working in large companies.
I guess medium sized companies would find many advices applicable to them as Corporate Responsiblity is all about decreasing your costs ( resource and energy efficiency ), improving quality and employee motivation and well-being as well as the company’s reputation.
All in all, I recommend this book to anyone who is willing to learn out more about Corporate Responsibility as it is a real must read on the field whith many an advice or idea.
Grade : 9 out of 10.