A while back, a woman I met who works in corporate social responsibility at Patagonia told me that their customers were asking so many questions about working conditions in its supply chain that they had to educate their customer relations representatives about what they were doing to address these issues. If only more companies had that kind of problem! Patagonia has always been associated with environmental causes, but they are also quietly honest about the challenges they face on the labor side. Their multimedia presentations about the origin of products raise the bar for transparency. Sure, we could quibble about how honest they really are with themselves and with us, but it's a huge step in the right direction, one I wish more companies would take. Now, Patagonia has put together an excellent video in which their executives and outside observers discuss some of the challenges and complexity in ethical sourcing. It includes interviews with Michael Posner of Human Rights First, Auret van Heerden of the Fair Labor Association, Richard Applebaum of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and moi. Click on "Digging Deeper" here.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Go Patagonia!
A while back, a woman I met who works in corporate social responsibility at Patagonia told me that their customers were asking so many questions about working conditions in its supply chain that they had to educate their customer relations representatives about what they were doing to address these issues. If only more companies had that kind of problem! Patagonia has always been associated with environmental causes, but they are also quietly honest about the challenges they face on the labor side. Their multimedia presentations about the origin of products raise the bar for transparency. Sure, we could quibble about how honest they really are with themselves and with us, but it's a huge step in the right direction, one I wish more companies would take. Now, Patagonia has put together an excellent video in which their executives and outside observers discuss some of the challenges and complexity in ethical sourcing. It includes interviews with Michael Posner of Human Rights First, Auret van Heerden of the Fair Labor Association, Richard Applebaum of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and moi. Click on "Digging Deeper" here.
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4 comments:
Interesting post- I shall have to watch it from home (where I have speakers).
I tried contacting Patagonia several times about CSR in 2002-2003, but never got anything more than long-but-obvioiusly-template reply emails about their belief in CSR so I took the replies with a grain of salt.
I think that woman was so transparent to telling to the costumer the real situation, I think she did the right because sometimes people avoid costume's questions like those.m10m
Interesting because many people ask for jobs there, not how much they want is about the conditions as you said i wanted to live there but the conditions are almost inhuman... in social terms, no free days, and the salary was extremely low.
Really like the new album cover. Just what I needed - another project. keep posting such stuff. It's very informative.
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