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2010 Best Practices
Service Learning: Using Your Skills to Help a Local OrganizationPurpose: To encourage chapters to commit to and engage in ongoing service learning activities during the year. VITA programs are not to be considered for this project.
Required: The Chapter will: (1) identify a small business or non-profit entity in the community that can use the skills provided by Chapter members; (2) identify the accounting, finance and/or information systems needs of the organization; (3) develop a project plan to help the organization meet the identified needs; (4) execute that plan during the year; (6) measure the success of the plan and execution; and, (5) develop an executive quality presentation packet and make at least two separate presentations in addition to the Regional presentation.
A project may involve a multi-year plan of involvement. Where the Chapter’s subsequent involvement is meaningful in making new contributions to the organization, the project will be eligible for future Best Practices submissions. A Chapter may also build on a program from last year’s Best Practices competition; however, the Chapter must indicate in their abstract and in their presentation how they have grown or enhanced the program since last year.
Use the Abstract information in the Best Practices Procedures for preparing the abstract. Follow the presentation guidelines in the Best Practices Procedures in preparing your presentation plus include photos or a video of your chapter engaged in the project.
Ethics and Integrity in Business: Identify and/or Promote Ethical Business Practices
Purpose: To promote ethics and integrity in business practice by: (1) recognizing those individual and organization exemplars that already adhere to high standards of ethics and integrity in business practice; and, (2) by developing materials that will help other individuals and organizations emulate the exemplar. At least two options suggest themselves for this project. Chapters are to create one Best Practice Project, not one per option.
Option 1-The Ethics Exemplar
Required: Identify an individual or organization in your community that is an exemplar of ethics and integrity in business practice. Work with that individual or organization to create a presentation that will: (1) tell a compelling story about how the person or organization came to be an exemplar; (2) analyze the elements that led to the successful exemplar behavior; (3) provide a roadmap for how other individuals or organization’s can take advantage of the exemplar’s success and strengthen themselves or their organization’s commitment to ethics and integrity in business; (4) develop an executive quality presentation packet; and, (5) make at least two presentations in addition to the Regional meeting presentation.
There are numerous local and national organizations giving awards for ethics and integrity in business. The Chapter may consider partnering with one of these organizations in identifying the candidate and developing its presentation.
Option 2-The Ethics Failure
Required: Identify an organization that has suffered a breakdown in their ethical behavior where its management has not behaved with integrity in business practice. Work with the publicly available information. If any of the principals (perpetrators, whistleblowers, forensic auditors, etc.) are willing to discuss the issues involved, consider contacting them for interviews. Based on the information gathered: (1) choose a specific perspective from which to tell the story, e.g. a special committee of the Board of Director, the external independent accountant, a relevant regulator such as the SEC; (2) identify the material weaknesses in governance and controls that allowed the breech in ethical behavior to occur; (3) tell a compelling story about how the failure unfolded and its consequences for various stakeholders; (4) prepare recommendations for governance and control remediation of the material weaknesses discovered; (5) develop an executive quality presentation packet; and, (6) make at two presentations in addition to the Regional meeting presentation.
Use the Abstract information in the Best Practices Procedures Manual to prepare the abstract. Follow the presentation guidelines in the Best Practices Procedures in preparing your presentation plus include photos of your chapter engaged in the project.
Chapter Sustainability: The Future Success of Your Chapter
Purpose: Development and execution of strategies that promote greater participation in Chapter and Regional activities by one or more of the following groups: (1) candidate, student, faculty, alumni and honorary members; and, (2) greater ongoing participation by representatives from the business community.
Required: Chapters may follow the 2008 – 2009 Best Practices Chapter Sustainability Best Practice guidance produced in the footnote below.1 Alternatively, the Chapter may identify a specific area or areas for a targeted change effort where the Chapter judges are particularly deficient, or where unique opportunities for improvement present themselves. By example only, a Chapter may be experiencing difficulties in attracting local, regional and national business participation in their programs. In this case, the Chapter may wish to: (1) do a thorough self-assessment to determine what Chapter characteristics are or are not currently attractive to business. Use of an independent facilitator will help assure a rigorous and complete assessment; (2) develop and executive a program to change the Chapter based on the assessment; (3) develop and execute a program to, in this example, attract the business community to participate in the Chapter activities. The Chapter should consider involving the business community in the self-assessment process itself; (4) measure the success of the program. Measuring success is critical to this project. The Chapter must decide for itself what it means to promote “greater participation.” Is it simply the number of students, alumni or business representatives participating and/or a combination if the quality of participation and numbers? It is up to the Chapter to create, justify and collect data on the measures; (5) develop an executive quality presentation packet and make at least one presentation in addition to the Regional meeting. Use the Abstract information in the Best Practices Procedures Manual to prepare the abstract. Follow the presentation guidelines in the Best Practices Procedures in preparing your presentation plus include photos or a video of your chapter engaged in the project.
Submit an abstract for the Regional Meeting that includes answers to the following questions:
1. What strategies has your Chapter developed to recruit and maintain active student members?
2. Describe the succession plan your Chapter has created.
3. What activities has your Chapter developed to gain and maintain institutional support (address academic program(s), college, and outside business(s).
4. Describe how you use alumni in activities throughout the year.
5. Describe how your chapter determines your yearly budget goals and the strategies used to meet those goals.
6. Describe the different types of media used by your Chapter to gain exposure and any opportunities received as a result of such media exposure.
If you are interested in participating in Best Practices, please contact Jenny Park at jennypark.bap@gmail.com or Alene Vanden Heuvel at alenevandenheuvel.bap@gmail.com. Participation in Best Practices is an excellent way to strengthen your leadership, critical thinking, and public speaking skills!
2009 Best Practices
Service Learning: Using Your Skills to Help a Local OrganizationPurpose: To encourage chapters to engage in a service learning type of activity during the year.
Required: The chapter will identify either a non-profit or a small business in the community that could use the skill set provided by its members. They would identify either an accounting, finance or systems project to complete during the year and then present what they did.
Use the Abstract information in the Best Practices Procedures for preparing the abstract. Follow the presentation guidelines in the Best Practices Procedures in preparing your presentation plus include photos or a video of your chapter engaged in the project.
Developing Life Skills: Helping Others Succeed
Purpose: To develop a project that will help others acquire the education and skills training needed to succeed in either the workplace or with their personal finances.
Required: This is intentionally left very broad to allow chapters to help others in their community with either job training, computer, financial literacy, or other business related skills. The chapter may develop their own program or become significantly involved with a local organization that offers these types of programs.
Use the Abstract information in the Best Practices Procedures for preparing the abstract.
Follow the presentation guidelines in the Best Practices Procedures in preparing your presentation plus include photos or a video of your chapter engaged in the project.
Chapter Sustainability: The Future Success of Your Chapter
Purpose: To encourage chapters to develop and execute a strategy to ensure long-term sustainability of the chapter.
Required: Chapters will review their current procedures and practices for sustaining success, identify areas that need attention, and develop and implement strategies in weak areas.
Since this topic is a little different than the usual Best Practices topic, the abstract and presentation will be a little different. The abstract submitted for the Regional Meeting should include answers to the following questions:
What strategies has your chapter developed to recruit and maintain active student members?
Describe the succession plan your chapter has created.
What activities has your chapter developed to gain and maintain institutional support (address academic program(s), college, and outside businesses).
Describe how you use alumni in activities throughout the year.
Describe how your chapter determines your yearly budget goals and the strategies used to meet those goals.
Describe the different types of media used by your chapters to gain exposure and any opportunities received as a result of such media exposure.
If you are interested in participating in Best Practices, please contact Eric Liang at EricLiang.bap@gmail.com or Robert Stoumbos at RobertStoumbos.bap@gmail.com. Participation in Best Practices is an excellent way to strengthen your leadership, critical thinking, and public speaking skills!
Best Practices Corporate Social Responsibility Results
Educating Our Community
We began this project by researching CSR through background articles and through interviews with professors teaching the subject and professionals working in the field. We hosted four different events, two of them through with our Beta Alpha Psi Chapter and two more with local high school DECA classes.
BAP Presentations- February 20th, 2007
We had two guest speakers at our presentation, each speaking for about 30 minutes. The first guest speaker was Professor Westerman from the University of Washington. He spoke about the history of corporations and their social responsibility requirements. He also discussed sustainability and the domino affect that everyday business operations have on the environment. The last topic he covered was the triple-bottom-line and how the social, environmental, and economic performances need to be evaluated when measuring whether a company is performing well.
The second speaker was Margaret Yung who is the Financial Vice President and National Manager of Washington Mutual. She shared with us Washington Mutual’s Community Lending & Investment commitment which is dedicated to providing affordable housing. She also discussed Washington Mutual’s charitable contributions towards community development, K-12 education and financial education.
BAP Survey Results
Before this first BAP presentation we gave the eighty BAP members, four professors, and four professionals who attended surveys. These surveys asked who had heard of CSR before and what their views were on the issues involved with it. We found that 36.2% of the attendees had never heard of CSR before.
We also asked "How strongly do you feel that corporations have a duty to correct adverse social impacts they cause?" The results were strongly skewed that they should.
The next question was "How important is it that a corporation helps to conserve the environment?" The responses were once again strongly in favor of this.
BAP Presentation- March 8th, 2007
On March 8th, we held a second presentation for our chapter. The guest speaker was Ken Schram who is a commentator from KOMO-TV. He taught our chapter the skills needed to make issues relating to corporate social responsibility come to life and be given the attention and thought. He discussed the importance and how to use critical dialogue to push for corporations to change. Our chapter learned that critical dialogue is important because corporations are not going to change unless there is a financial advantage.
DECA Presentations- March 21 & 23, 2007
In March, four BAP members, including Austin and I, presented to Shorewood High School and Hazen High School. The presentations were each 45 minutes. We began by giving the students an overview of the history of corporations and their obligations to be incorporated. We then introduced the triple-bottom line and the idea of how measuring the social, environmental and economic performance of a corporation creates a better evaluation of the firm’s overall performance. We also discussed CSR issues relating to NIKE, Wal-Mart and Starbucks. Throughout the presentation we integrated student involvement by asking for their input regarding the responsibility of corporations.
DECA Survey Results
At the end of each presentation we had the students fill out a survey. In all we had 54 student participate. The survey had three questions asking the students to rate how much they agreed with each statement on a scale from 1 to 5. With 1 being not agreeing at all and a 5 being in complete agreement.
The first statement asked students how strongly they felt that our presentation increased their awareness about CSR. As you see the majority of the students felt our presentation increased their awareness about CSR.
The second statement asked the students if they expect to see environmentally conscious businesses in the future. From their responses we found that most students believe there will be little change, and a few students are hopeful that businesses will become environmentally conscious.
The third statement asked students if they expect there to be changes in the future business environment. The graph shows students believe there will be a change in the business environment.
Overall, the majority of the high school students felt our presentation changed their expectations towards the future business environment and increased their awareness about corporate social responsibility.
Impact of CSR on the Financial Environment
We researched CSR with several other BAP members. We compared and contrasted REI and Starbucks. REI released their first report this year, while Starbucks has released them for several years. We interviewed the CSR managers from both companies. We found that there were several challenges and goals ahead for this form of reporting through our research and interviews. Both companies have a lack of standards to guide their reporting. This is still an emerging form of reporting that is being developed by the companies as they report each year. Starbucks said they view this as a supplement to the financials for the benefit of the public and their shareholders. Both REI and Starbucks view CSR as a long term business strategy that builds their corporate reputation, customer loyalty, and goodwill.
Impact of CSR on the Environment
Public interest in CSR activities has increased. Companies are becoming more transparent and substantive in their social and environmental activities. Some examples of this are Starbucks’ Coffee and Farmers Equity program which provides financing to the farmers in developing countries who they buy their coffee from, so they can develop sustainable farming practices. REI builds LEED certified buildings for their stores. This is an environmental certification that these buildings use less utilities and sustainable materials and techniques in construction. Also, Washington Mutual has a Compass Housing project providing transitional and emergency services to the homeless in Seattle. We found that media scrutiny of CSR issues has increased, with more stories highlighting negative corporate activities. Articles such as "Forbes Corporate Scandal Sheet" and "Starbucks Scandal of Sept. 11" highlight negative aspects of corporate activities and negatively affect the image of companies.
Final Takeaways
The final takeaway from our research, interviews, and presentations regarding CSR is that CSR is an emerging issue. People are becoming more aware and critical of the effects corporations have on the environment and society. In order to initiate change among corporations and increase the awareness of CSR issues, people need to use critical dialogue and put pressure on the corporations to change.
We also found that there is little authoritative guidance on how and what to report. This makes comparability of CSR reports very low. These reports are often filled with information about the various activities corporations are involved in and can be as thick as their financial statements. Without knowing what to look for and how to determine if what their doing is sufficient the reports are often overwhelming to the reader and incomparable to reports of other firms.
The only comparison available is among a companies own consecutive CSR reports.
Overall CSR reports are in their "infancy" phase and are just beginning to emerge for many companies. As the public becomes more informed about CSR we believe these reports will develop and become more important and comparable.
Also with increased public pressure to be socially responsible, corporations will have incentives to develop the reporting to show that they are socially responsible.