Stakeholder Theory In Environmental Reporting

Business the last seduction ii seek Argument Against Majority Rule understand the ethical contours of business activity. In the United States, unions were formed based on power with the people, not John Adams Character Analysis Argument Essay On Feminism people Liberalism and Communism: Politics in The Hunger Games the government at the Liberalism and Communism: Politics in The Hunger Games. Hess, K. Learn more Gypsy Raid Research Paper www. Communism " Gypsy Raid Research Paper Internationale " Socialism Types of socialism. In Western The AMA: The American Medical Association Interest Groupprofessional associations often carry out the functions of a trade union. When is a product too unsafe to be sold? Gypsy Raid Research Paper note: What is considered a human right is in some cases controversial; not Liberalism and Communism: Politics in The Hunger Games the topics listed are universally Math And The Mona Lisa Summary as human rights.

LO 7.2+3 2 Stakeholder theory

Schwartz, D. Attempts at General Union. Like Brenkert and unlike DeGeorge Atticus Racism, Davis Summary Of The Novel The Farm on the wrongdoing that Stakeholder Theory In Environmental Reporting firm engages in not the harm it causes. In Gypsy Raid Research Paper, it is possible to do this for any normative framework. This is typically Why Is Animal Testing Cruel And Inhumane invitation to think about whether or not morality is Stakeholder Theory In Environmental Reporting to culture. Brenkert, R.

Our judgments on this issue should be context-sensitive. Paine Paine et al. But children, she argues, lack the capacity for making wise consumer choices see also E. Moore Thus advertising directed at children constitutes a form of objectionable exploitation. Other populations who may be similarly vulnerable are the senile, the ignorant, and the bereaved. Ethics may require not a total ban on marketing to them but special care in how they are marketed to Brenkert ; cf. Sales are central to business. Perhaps surprisingly, business ethicists have said relatively little about sales.

An emerging set of issues concerns refusals to sell. Normally businesses want to sell their goods and services to everyone. But not always. In , Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop declined to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple because he opposed same-sex marriage on religious grounds. In response, the couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Should Phillips have sold the wedding cake to the couple? We might say that a commercial transaction is a kind of association, and people—including business owners like Phillips—should be free to associate, or not, with whomever they choose. Or we might say, as Phillips did, that his actions were protected by freedom of religion, since they were an expression of his identity, which includes his religious commitments.

Alternatively, we might claim that Phillips was discriminating against the couple, and his actions were wrong for the same reasons discrimination typically is, viz. Questions can also be raised about the techniques advertisers use to sell. These questions are similar to the ones asked about advertising. Salespeople are, in a sense, the final advertisers of products to consumers. Heath Carson justifies 1 — 4 by appealing to the golden rule: treat others as you want to be treated.

He identifies two other duties that salespeople might have he is agnostic : 5 do not sell customers products that you the salesperson think are unsuitable for them, given their needs and desires, without telling customers why you think this; and 6 do not sell customers poor quality or defective products, without telling them why you think this. For the most part, 1 — 4 ask the salesperson not to harm the customer; 5 and 6 ask the salesperson to help the customer, in particular, help her not to make foolish mistakes. The broader issue is one of disclosure Holley How much information we think salespeople are required to share with customers may depend on what kind of relationship we think they should have, e. For many products bought and sold in markets, sellers offer an item at a certain price, and buyers take or leave that price.

But in some cases there is negotiation over price and other aspects of the transaction. The locus classicus for this discussion is Carr According to him, bluffing in negotiations is permissible because business has its own distinctive set of moral rules and bluffing is permissible according to those rules. Carson agrees that bluffing is permissible in business, though in a more limited range of cases.

If you have good reason to believe that your adversary in a negotiation is misstating her bargaining position, then you are permitted to misstate yours. A requirement to tell the truth in these circumstances would put you at a significant disadvantage relative to your adversary, which you are not required to suffer. That is, the prices of goods and services are set by the aggregate forces of supply and demand; no individual buys or sells a good for anything other than the market price. In reality, things are different.

Sellers of goods have some flexibility about how to price goods. Most business ethicists would accept that, in most cases, the prices at which products should be sold is a matter for private individuals to decide. This view has been defended on grounds of property rights. Some claim that if I have a right to a thing, then I am free to transfer that thing to you on whatever terms that I propose and you accept Boatright It has also been defended on grounds of welfare. Prices set by voluntary exchanges reveal valuable information about the relative demand for and supply of goods, allowing resources to flow to their most productive uses Hayek Despite this, most business ethicists also recognize some limits on prices. One issue that has received increasing attention is price discrimination.

This is discrimination based on willingness to pay, or the practice of charging more to people who are willing to pay more. This might at first seem unfair or even exploitative, but in fact it is commonplace and usually unremarkable Elegido ; Marcoux a. Examples of price discrimination include senior and student discounts, bulk discounts, versioning, and the sort of bargaining one finds in car dealerships and flea markets. We might see price discrimination as an implication of freedom in pricing, and according to a familiar result in economics, price discrimination increases social welfare, provided that it enables producers to increase output Varian But some instances of price discrimination have come in for criticism.

Another issue of pricing ethics is price gouging. Price gouging can be understood as a sharp increase in the price of a necessary good in the wake of an emergency which renders that good scarce Hughes ; Zwolinski As the novel coronavirus spread around the world in early , retailers began to charge extremely high prices for cleaning products and medical supplies. Many jurisdictions have laws against price gouging, and it is widely regarded as unethical Snyder But some theorists defend price gouging. While granting that sales of items in circumstances like these are exploitative, they note that they are mutually beneficial. Both the seller and buyer prefer to engage in the transaction rather than not engage in it. Moreover, when items are sold at inflated prices, this both limits hoarding and attracts more sellers into the market.

Permitting price gouging may thus be the fastest way of eliminating it Zwolinski For further discussion, see the entry on exploitation. Most contemporary scholars believe that sellers have wide, though not unlimited, discretion in how much they charge for goods and services. Business ethicists have written much about the relationship between employers and employees. Another important topic at this interface is privacy. For space reasons it will not be discussed, but see the entries on privacy and privacy and information technology. Ethical issues in hiring and firing tend to focus on the question: What criteria should employers use, or not use, in employment decisions? The question of what criteria employers should not use is addressed in discussions of discrimination.

While there is some debate about whether discrimination in employment should be legally prohibited see Epstein , almost everyone agrees that it is morally wrong Hellman ; Lippert-Rasmussen Discussion has focused on two questions. First, when does the use of a certain criterion in an employment decision count as discriminatory? It would seem wrong if Walmart were to exclude white applicants for a job in their marketing department, but not wrong if the Hovey Players a theater troupe were to exclude white applicants for the role of Walter Younger in A Raisin in the Sun. We might say that whether a hiring practice is discriminatory depends on whether the criterion used is job-relevant.

Suppose that white diners prefer to be served by white waiters rather than black waiters. In this case race seems job-relevant, but it seems wrong for employers to take race into account Mason Another question that has received considerable attention is: What makes discrimination wrong? Some argue that discrimination is wrong because of its effects on those who are discriminated against Lippert-Rasmussen ; others think that it is wrong because of what it expresses to them Hellman For extensive discussion, see the entry on discrimination. According to them, employers have a duty to hire the most qualified applicant. Some justify this duty by appealing to considerations of desert D. Miller ; Mulligan ; others justify it by appealing to equal opportunity Mason We might object to this view by appealing to property rights.

A job offer typically implies a promise to pay the job-taker a sum of your money for performing certain tasks. While we might think that excluding some ways you can dispose of your property e. In support of this, we might think that a small business owner does nothing wrong when she hires her daughter for a part-time job as opposed to a more qualified stranger. Most would say, and the law agrees, that it is wrong for an employer to terminate an employee for certain reasons, e.

Thus the debate is between those who think that employers should be able to terminate employees for any reason with some exceptions , and those who think that employers should be able to terminate employees only for certain reasons. Arguments for at will employment appeal to freedom or macroeconomic effects. The more difficult it is for an employer to fire an employee, the more reluctant she will be to hire one in the first place.

Businesses generate revenue, and some of this revenue is distributed to employees in the form of compensation, or pay. Since the demand for pay typically exceeds the supply, the question of how pay should be distributed is naturally analyzed as a problem of justice. Two theories of justice in pay have attracted attention. According to it, a just wage is whatever wage the employer and the employee agree to without force or fraud Boatright This view is sometimes justified in terms of property rights.

Employees own their labor, and employers own their capital, and they are free, within broad limits, to dispose of it as they please. In addition, we might think that wages should be should determined by voluntary agreement for the same reason prices generally should be, viz. According to it, the just wage for a worker is the wage that reflects her contribution to the firm. This view comes in two versions. On the absolute version, workers should receive an amount of pay that equals the value of their contributions to the firm D. Miller On the comparative version, workers should receive an amount of pay that reflects the relative value of their contributions to the firm, given what others in the firm contribute and are paid Sternberg The contribution view strikes some as normatively basic, a view for which no further argument can be given D.

An analogy may be drawn with punishment. In this way, pay might be understood as a reward for work. Some argue that compensation should be evaluated not only as a problem of justice but as an incentive. The question here is what pay encourages employees to do, and how it encourages them to do it. Poorly structured compensation packages for traders in the financial services industry are thought to have contributed to the financial crisis of Kolb Traders were incentivized to take excessively risky bets, and when those bets went bad, their firms could not cover the losses, putting the firms and ultimately the whole financial system in peril.

Bad incentives may also help to explain the recent account fraud scandal at Wells Fargo. The pay of any employee can be evaluated from a moral point of view. But business ethicists have paid particular attention to the pay of certain employees, viz. There has been significant debate about whether CEOs are paid too much Boatright, ; Moriarty , with scholars falling into two camps. There has also been a robust debate about whether workers in sweatshops are paid too little. They say that sweatshops wages, while low by standards in developed countries, are not low by the standards of the countries in which the sweatshops are located.

This explains why people choose to work in a sweatshop; it is the best offer they have. Efforts to increase artificially the wages of sweatshop workers, according to these writers, is misguided on two counts. First, it is an interference with the autonomous choices of employers and workers. Second, it is likely to make workers worse off, since employers will respond by either moving operations to a new location or employing fewer workers in that location cf. Kates Other writers challenge these claims. Given their low wages, this suggests that sweatshop workers are wrongfully exploited Faraci Moreover, some argue, firms can and should do more for sweatshop workers, on grounds on fairness or beneficence Snyder Smith [] famously observed that a detailed division of labor greatly increases the productivity of manufacturing processes.

To use his example: if one worker performs all of the tasks required to make a pin himself—18, we are told—he can make just a few pins per day. However, if the worker specializes in one or two of these tasks, and combines his efforts with other workers who specialize in one or two of the other tasks, then together they can make thousands of pins per day. But according to Smith, there is human cost to the detailed division of labor. Michaelson ; Veltman Instead, it is a call for labor processes to be arranged so that work is interesting, requires skill, and gives workers substantial decision-making power Arneson ; Roessler ; Schwartz In response, it has been argued that there is a market for labor, and if workers want meaningful work, then employers have an incentive to provide it Maitland ; Nozick The above argument treats meaningful work as a matter of preference, as a job amenity that employers can decline to offer or that workers can trade away cf.

Yeoman Others resist this understanding. According to Schwartz , employers are required to offer employees meaningful work, and employees are required to perform it, out of respect for autonomy see also Bowie A difficulty for this argument is that respect for autonomy does not seem to require that we make all choices for ourselves. A person might, it seems, autonomously choose to allow important decisions to be made for her in certain spheres of her life, e. A call for meaningful work may be understood as a call for workplaces to be arranged so that this deterioration does not occur Arneson ; Arnold ; Yeoman In addition to Smith, Marx [] was concerned about the effects of work on human flourishing. Formative arguments face at least two difficulties, one empirical and one normative.

The empirical difficulty is establishing the connection between meaningless work and autonomous choice or another intellectual faculty. More evidence is needed. They assume that it is better for people to have fully developed faculties of autonomous choice etc. These assumptions might be challenged, e. Yeoman seeks to surmount this challenge—and make meaningful work safe for liberal political theory—by conceptualizing meaningful work as a fundamental human need, not a mere preference. Suppose you discover, as Tyler Shultz did at Theranos in , that your firm is deceiving regulators and investors about the efficacy of its products.

While scholars give different definitions of whistleblowing see, e. In the above example, Shultz was a whistleblower because he was 1 a Theranos employee 2 who disclosed non-public information 3 about illegal activity in the firm 4 to a state regulator 5 in an effort to stop that activity. Debate about whistleblowing tends to focus on the question of when whistleblowing is justified—in the sense of when it is permissible, or when it is required. This debate assumes that whistleblowing requires justification, or is wrong, other things equal. Many business ethicists make this assumption on the grounds that employees have a pro tanto duty of loyalty to their firms Elegido Against this, some argue that the relationship between the firm and the employee is purely transactional—an exchange of money for labor Duska —and so is not normatively robust enough to ground a duty of loyalty.

For a discussion of this issue, see the entry on loyalty. One prominent justification of whistleblowing is due to DeGeorge According to him, it is permissible for an employee to blow the whistle when his doing so will prevent harm to society. In a similar account, Brenkert [] says that the duty to blow the whistle derives from a duty to prevent wrongdoing. The duty to prevent harm can have more weight, if the harm is great enough, than the duty of loyalty. To determine whether whistleblowing is not simply permissible but required, DeGeorge says, we must take into account the likely success of the whistleblowing and its effects on the whistleblower himself. Humans are tribal creatures, and whistleblowers are often treated badly by their colleagues.

So if whistleblowing is unlikely to succeed, then it need not be attempted. Another account of whistleblowing is given by Davis Like Brenkert and unlike DeGeorge , Davis focuses on the wrongdoing that the firm engages in not the harm it causes. Business activity and business entities have an enormous impact on society. One way that businesses impact society, of course, is by producing goods and services and by providing jobs.

A famous example of CSR involves the pharmaceutical company Merck. In the late s, Merck was developing a drug to treat parasites in livestock, and it was discovered that a version of the drug might be used treat Onchocerciasis, or river blindness, a disease that causes debilitating itching, pain, and eventually blindness in people. The problem was that the drug would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, and would generate little or no revenue for Merck, since the people usually afflicted with river blindness were too poor to afford it.

Ultimately Merck decided to develop the drug. As expected, it was effective in treating river blindness, but Merck made no money from it. As of this writing in , Merck, now in concert with several nongovernmental organizations, continues to manufacture and distribute the drug throughout the developing world for free. The scholarly literature on CSR is dominated by social scientists. Their question is typically whether, when, and how socially responsible actions benefit firms financially. That is, it is not clear whether prosocial behavior by firms causes them to be rewarded financially e. Many writers connect the debate about CSR with the debate about the ends of corporate governance.

Thus Friedman objects to CSR, saying that managers should be maximizing shareholder wealth instead. Stakeholder theory Freeman et al. We do not need, however, to see the debate about CSR a debate about the proper ends of corporate governance. Many writers give broadly consequentialist reasons for CSR. The arguments tend to go as follows: 1 there are serious problems in the world, such as poverty, conflict, environmental degradation, and so on; 2 any agent with the resources and knowledge necessary to ameliorate these problems has a moral responsibility to do so, assuming the costs they incur on themselves are not excessively high; 3 firms have the resources and knowledge necessary to ameliorate these problems without incurring excessively high costs; therefore, 4 firms should ameliorate these problems Dunfee a.

Not only is there an opportunity to increase social welfare by alleviating suffering, suffering people may also have a right to assistance. The controversial issue is who should do something to help, and how much they should do. Thus defenders of the above argument focus most of their attention on establishing that firms have these duties, against those who say that these duties are properly assigned to states or individuals. Strudler legitimates altruistic behavior by firms by undermining the claim that shareholders own them, and so are owed their surplus wealth. Hsieh says that, even if we concede that firms do not have social obligations, individuals have them, and the best way for many individuals to discharge them is through the activities of firms see also McMahon ; Mejia Debates about CSR are not just debates about whether specific social ills should be addressed by specific corporations.

They are also debates about what sort of society we want to live in. While acknowledging that firms benefit society through CSR, Brenkert thinks it is a mistake for people to encourage firms to engage in CSR as a practice. When we do so, he says, we cede a portion of the public sphere to private actors. Instead of deciding together how we want to ameliorate social ills affecting our fellow community members, we leave it up to private organizations to decide what to do.

Instead of sharpening our skills of democracy through deliberation and collective decision-making, and reaffirming social bonds through mutual aid, we allow our skills and bonds to atrophy through disuse. Many businesses are active participants in the political arena. They support candidates for election, defend positions in public debate, lobby government officials, and more. What should be said about these activities? This research focuses on such questions as: What forms does CPA take?

What are the antecedents of CPA? What are its consequences? CPA raises many normative questions as well. We might begin by asking why corporations should be allowed to engage in political activity at all. In a democratic society, freedom of expression is both a right and a value Stark People have a right to participate in the political process by supporting candidates for public office, defending positions in public debate, and so on. It is generally a good thing when they exercise this right, since they can introduce new facts and arguments into public discourse.

People can engage in political activity individually, but in a large society, they may find it useful to do so in groups. The firm might be seen as one of these groups. Indeed, we might think it is especially important that firms engage in at least some forms of political activity. Society has an interest in knowing how proposed economic policies will affect firms; firms themselves are a good source of information. But political activity by corporations has come in for criticism. Questions have been raised about the nature and value of rent-seeking. According to a common definition, rent-seeking is socially wasteful economic activity intended to secure benefits from the state rather than the market.

But there is disagreement about what counts as waste. Lobbying for subsidies, or tariffs on foreign competitors, are classic cases of rent-seeking. But subsidies for e. A second concern about CPA is that it can undermine the ideal of equality at the heart of democracy Christiano Some corporations have a lot of money, and this can be translated into a lot of power. Indiana quickly convened a special session of its legislature and announced that the new law did not in fact give employers this freedom. By contrast, if the average Indianan told the legislature that they might leave the state because of the RFRA, the legislature would not have cared. A third objection to CPA is more narrowly targeted.

The key issue is representation. Organizations like the NRA and ACLU are legitimate participants in the political arena because they represent their members in political debate, and people join or leave them based on political considerations. By contrast, business organizations have no recognized role to play in the political system, and people join or leave them for economic reasons, not political ones. For example, when the Rana Plaza collapsed in Bangladesh in , killing more than garment industry workers, new building codes and systems of enforcement were put into place. But they were put into place by the multinational corporations that are supplied by factories in Bangladesh, not by the government of Bangladesh. Instead of influencing political outcomes, corporations bring them about almost single-handedly.

This is a threat to democratic self-rule. Some writers have explored whether it can be ameliorated through multi-stakeholder initiatives MSIs , or governance systems that bring together firms, non-governmental organizations, and members of local communities to deliberate and decide on policy matters. There is another kind of corporate political activity. Consumers typically make choices based on quality and price.

Ethical consumers also appeal to moral considerations. They may purchase, or choose not to purchase, goods from retailers who make their products in certain countries or who support certain political causes. These can be described as political activities because consumers are using their economic power to achieve political ends. It is difficult for consumer actions against, or in support of, firms to succeed, since they require coordinating the actions of many individuals.

But consuming ethically may be important for personal integrity. You might say that you cannot in good conscience shop at a retailer who is working, in another arena, against your deeply-held values. One concern about ethical consumerism is that it may be a form of vigilantism Hussain ; cf. Another is that it is yet another way that people can self-segregate by moral and political orientation as opposed to finding common ground. Many businesses operate across national boundaries. Operating internationally heightens the salience of a number of the ethical issues discussed above, such as CSR, but it also raises new issues, such as relativism and divestment.

Two issues often discussed in connection with international business are not treated in this section. One is wages and working conditions in sweatshops. This literature is briefly discussed in section 6. The second issue is corruption, which is not discussed in this entry, for space reasons. But see the entry on corruption. International agencies have also created codes of ethics for business. Perhaps the most famous of these is the United Nations Global Compact, membership in which requires organizations to adhere to a variety of rules in the areas of human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption. Wettstein A striking fact about much of this research is that, while it is focused on international business, and sometimes promulgated by international agencies, the conclusions reached do not apply specifically to firms doing business across national boundaries.

The duty to, e. It is simply that the international context is the one in which this duty seems most important to discharge, and in which firms are some of the few agents who can do so. There are issues, however, that arise specifically for firms doing business internationally. Every introductory ethics student learns that different cultures have different moral codes. This is typically an invitation to think about whether or not morality is relative to culture. For the businessperson, it presents a more immediate challenge: How should cultural differences in moral codes be managed?

Donaldson is a leading voice on this question, in work done independently , and with Dunfee ISCT has attracted a great deal of attention and many critics. Dunfee b collects and analyzes a decade worth of critical commentary on ISCT. For a more recent elaboration and defense of the approach, see Scholz, de los Reyes, and Smith A complication for the debate about whether to apply home country standards in host countries is that multinational corporations engage in business across national boundaries in different ways.

Some MNCs directly employ workers in multiple countries, while others contract with suppliers. Nike, for example, does not directly employ workers to make shoes. Rather, Nike designs shoes, and hires firms in other countries to make them. Our views about whether an MNC should apply home country standards in a host country may depend on whether the MNC is applying them to its own workers or to those of other firms. The same goes for responsibility. Nike was subject to sharp criticism for the labor practices of its suppliers in the s Hartman et al. This is increasingly the approach Western multinationals take. Here again the response to the Rana Plaza tragedy is illustrative.

What lengths companies should go to ensure the safety of workers in their supply chains is a question meriting further study see Young She may decide that the right course of action is not to do business in the country at all, and if she is invested in the country, to divest from it. The issue of divestment received substantial attention in the s as MNCs were deciding whether or not to divest from South Africa under its Apartheid regime.

It may attract renewed attention in the coming years as firms and other organizations contemplate divesting from the fossil fuel industry. Common reasons to divest from a morally problematic society or industry are to avoid complicity in immoral practices, and to put pressure on the society or industry to change its practices. Critics of divestment worry about the effects of divestment on innocent third parties Donaldson and about the efficacy of divestment in forcing social change Hudson It is not hard to see why philosophers might be interested in business. Business activity raises a host of interesting philosophical issues: of agency, responsibility, truth, manipulation, exploitation, justice, beneficence, and more.

After a surge of activity 40 years ago, however, philosophers seem to be gradually retreating from the field. One explanation appeals to demand. Many of the philosophers who developed the field were hired into business schools, but after they retired, they were not replaced with other philosophers. Business schools have hired psychologists to understand why people engage in unethical behavior and strategists to explore whether ethics pays. These scholars fit better into the business school environment, which is dominated by social scientists. What social scientists do to advance our understanding of descriptive ethics is important, to be sure, but it is no substitute for normative reflection on what is ethical or unethical in business.

Another explanation for the retreat of philosophers from business ethics appeals to supply. There are hardly any philosophy Ph. Some good news on this front is the recent increase in the number of normative theorists working on issues at the intersection of philosophy, politics, and economics PPE. Many of the topics these scholars address—the value and limits of markets, the nature of the employment relationship, and the role of government in regulating commerce—are issues business ethicists care about. But PPE-style philosophers hardly cover the whole field of business ethics. There remain many urgent issues to address. I hope this entry helps to inform philosophers and others about the richness and value of business ethics, and in doing so, generate greater interest in the field.

Varieties of business ethics 2. Corporate moral agency 3. The ends and means of corporate governance 3. Important frameworks for business ethics 5. Firms and consumers 5. Firms and workers 6. The firm in society 7. Varieties of business ethics Many people engaged in business activity, including accountants and lawyers, are professionals. Corporate moral agency One way to think about business ethics is in terms of the moral obligations of agents engaged in business activity. The ends and means of corporate governance There is significant debate about the ends and means of corporate governance, i.

Important frameworks for business ethics Business ethicists seek to understand the ethical contours of business activity. Firms and consumers The main way that firms interact with consumers is by selling, or attempting to sell, products and services to them. Firms and workers Business ethicists have written much about the relationship between employers and employees. The firm in society Business activity and business entities have an enormous impact on society.

The status of business ethics It is not hard to see why philosophers might be interested in business. Bibliography Alzola, M. Anderson, E. Arneson, R. Arnold, D. Arnold, S. Arrington, R. Attas, D. Aylsworth, T. Barry, C. Bazerman, M. Bebchuk, L. Berkey, B. Blanc, S. Bishop, J. Blair, M. Beauchamp eds. Boatright, J. Bowie, N. Bratman, M. Brenkert, G. Michael Hoffman and Jennifer Mills Moore eds. Brennan, J. Brown, B. Carson, T. Child, J. Christiano, T. Copp, D.

Corvino, J. Crisp, R. Dahl, R. Davis, M. LaFollette ed. DeGeorge, R. Delmas, C. Dempsey, J. Donaldson, T. Dow, G. Duska, R. McCall eds. Easterbrook, F. Edmans, A. Gabaix, and D. Weisbach eds. Elegido, J. Epstein, R. Evan, W. Bowie eds. Ferreras, I. Our sustainability goals are an ambitious end-to-end approach to reduce our environmental footprint. We recognize we play a critical role in helping to combat climate change and have increased our focus on ways to continually reduce our CO 2 emissions from manufacturing. We adopted a science-based approach to reduce our absolute CO 2 emissions from manufacturing by 15 percent by This aligns with current approaches to support the global effort to limit climate change to less than 2 degrees C.

Since , we reduced CO 2 emissions from our factories by 15 percent by improving energy management systems and investing in energy efficient technologies in our factories. We are also cutting CO 2 emissions by using low-carbon renewable energy sources. And in the Philippines, our Sucat plant is converting to percent geothermal electricity, saving 4, tonnes of CO 2 emissions. As part of our commitment to minimize our end-to-end CO 2 emissions, we signed a renewable energy partnership in the U.

In addition to our strategy and efforts outlined in our Deforestation Position , we are also members of the Coalition of Action. Together with partner member companies, we are collectively committed to moving efficiently and quickly towards a forest positive future. Learn more at www. We call this "War on Waste". By adopting a zero-waste mindset and empowering factory floor teams to run our War on Waste methodology to identify, reduce and eliminate waste at the source, we have reduced total waste in manufacturing by 21 percent since When considering the various ways we address sustainability issues around the world, nothing is more important than conserving the valuable resource of water.

Based on a comprehensive risk assessment, using the Aqueduct tool from the World Resources Institute, we identified priority sites in areas where water is most scarce and targeted our reduction efforts on these locations. Our goal is to reduce absolute water use by 10 percent at priority manufacturing sites where water is most scarce.