Preventing (Or At Least Predicting?) CSR Ratings Failure

This article was originally posted on the CSRHub Blog and Triple Pundit

By Bahar Gidwani

One of our board members sent us a link to a great Harvard Business School article about how green ratings sources have failed to properly measure News Corporation’s social and environmental performance. The authors point out that News Corporation has set a goal to be “zero carbon” and therefore climate neutral.  But at the same time, the editorial side of News Corporation’s media properties has taken an anti-climate-change stance.

The authors describe a few of the ways in which a large company such as News Corporation could have actively pushed for positive change. They ask why ratings firms (including some who are our partners) don’t include “corporate activism” as one of the ways they measure corporate social responsibility (CSR).

It may sound smug, but we agree with this article and hope that our CSRHub ratings do make this adjustment. As a starting point, we would offer our ratings for News Corporation. Read more on the CSRHub blog>>  

Bahar Gidwani is a Cofounder and CEO of CSRHub. Formerly, he was the CEO of New York-based Index Stock Imagery, Inc, from 1991 through its sale in 2006. He has built and run large technology-based businesses and has experience building a multi-million visitor Web site. Bahar holds a CFA, was a partner at Kidder, Peabody & Co., and worked at McKinsey & Co. Bahar has consulted to both large companies such as Citibank, GE, and Acxiom and a number of smaller software and Web-based companies. He has an MBA (Baker Scholar) from Harvard Business School and a BS in Astronomy and Physics (magna cum laude) from Amherst College. Bahar races sailboats, plays competitive bridge, and is based in New York City.

CSRHub is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings tool that allows managers, consultants, academics and activists to track the sustainability performance of major companies. We aggregate data from more than 130 sources including seven leading socially responsible investing (SRI) analysts, Carbon Disclosure Project, indexes, NGOs, crowd sources, and government agencies to provide our users with a comprehensive source of employee, environmental, community, and governance information on nearly 5,000 publicly traded companies in 65 countries. CSRHub is a B Corporation.

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