Monday's quick reads: Timberland, bank bonuses, and Dubai's new media team

1.) Bank bonuses, bigger than ever, are in the spotlight (The New York Times) -- Everyone on Wall Street is fixated on The Number. The bank bonus season looks as if it will be one of the largest and most controversial blowouts the industry has ever seen, The New York Times’s Louise Story and Eric Dash report.

2.) Insurers tee up reputation risk plan (Financial Times) -- Insurers are planning to introduce a product to limit companies' financial fall-out when their brands or high-profile spokesmen such as Tiger Woods suffer reputational damage. DeWitt Stern, a 110-year-old US insurance broker, has already received interest from London underwriters in backing a reputational risk product it aims to launch early in 2010.

3.) Dubai forms new media office to deal with tarnished image (The Wall Street Journal) -- Amid intense scrutiny of its economic problems Dubai has established a new media office to help promote the emirate in a better light and monitor the press. The department, known as the Media Office for Dubai Government, will seek to portray an "accurate picture" of the emirate, a statement from the ruler's office said.

4.) Getting Started in CSR Social Media: Examples from Intel and Timberland (Triple Pundit) -- If one of your resolutions for the new year is to better utilize social media to tell your company’s sustainability stories, take a look at how Intel and Timberland are tapping the potential of the Web 2.0.

Ethisphere names its most influential people in business ethics

(Image Credit: Brad Swonetz)
Ethisphere has published its list of the 100 most influential people in business ethics in 2009. Take a look by clicking here.

Note that the list does not stop with ethical corporate managers, but also includes transparency and anti-corruption advocates.

Not surprisingly, public consensus continues to hold that the corporate world works best when watchdogs, journalists, and whistleblowers play an important role. No doubt that sentiment has been reinforced by the questionable ethical conduct we saw in recent years from many corporate leaders heading into the economic downturn.

Also note that the corporate leaders on this list made it because they are proactively addressing challenges their brands will face in the future rather than waiting passively for those challenges to consume their brands. The list includes:

Peter Solmssen – General Counsel, Siemens: Solmssen was called in to clean up Siemens and revamp its culture. Many eyes around the world (regulators, companies considering disclosing FCPA violations, shareholders, and many more) will be watching Solmssen’s actions as a live case study as to how a company as large as Siemens can recover from such a large legal issue. One example is Siemen’s new $100 million anti-corruption initiative that will fund global anti-corruption programs.

Sharon Allen (pictured)– Chairman, Deloitte: Allen leads the environment at Deloitte, an environment that is increasingly known for using business ethics as a competitive advantage to secure clients and retain top employees. Allen travelled quite a bit during 2009, often to speak on the advantages of using business ethics to further a company’s operational goals.

Timothy J. Carey – Director of Sustainability, PepsiCo: Carey earns a spot on this list for Pepsi’s new “Eco-Fina” bottle. The new bottle, less harmful to the environment than traditional plastic bottles, received glowing reviews from some of the most ardent anti-plastic bottle groups out there.

Jon Iwata – Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications, IBM: Iwata and his team are responsible for instilling IBM Values into the company’s practices and operations, and for coordinating IBM’s corporate affairs initiatives. This year Iwata led efforts to advocate IBMers responsible engagement of business and social issues via online communications tools fostering relationships, learning and collaboration.

Michael Passoff – Associate Director, Corporate Social Responsibility Program, As You Sow: Activist shareholder resolutions are a dime a dozen, particularly in regard to environmental initiatives. This year marked a milestone — the first of those resolutions to ever pass. Passoff, Associate Director of As You Sow, helped to organize the resolution and the investor vote, which requires Idaho utility company IdaCorp to set greenhouse gas reduction goals.

David Michaels – Assistant Secretary of Labor, OSHA: Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, must seem a bit more intimidating to Board Rooms than his predecessors as it was recently ruled that private companies that perform work for public companies will be liable under Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. This expands the authority of SOX which also expands the powers of OSHA, the regulatory body that oversees SOX.

Monday's quick reads: Microsoft, reputation management, and social media

1.) Where does blogging end and plugging begin? (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) -- Consumers researching a product online can find a trove of insightful reviews and revealing complaints. Or, they can get mired in a snake pit of fake blogs, paid testimonials and word-of-mouth campaigns engineered by marketers posing as consumers. At the center of it all are bloggers, who find themselves being tugged in opposite directions by big business and federal regulators — with each side claiming the other threatens the vitality and independence of the medium.

2.) Attraction to "do good" brands is escalating (Marketing Daily) -- Whether despite or because of the recession, consumers are more inclined than ever to spend their money with companies and brands that have dedicated themselves to a social purpose, according to new findings from Edelman Worldwide's "goodpurpose Consumer Study."

3.) Employees: It's easy to damage a company's reputation on social media (Social Media Business Council) -- Deloitte’s 2009 Ethics and Workplace Survey revealed that nearly three quarters of working Americans believe it is easy to damage a brand’s reputation via social media. The survey also showed that while 58% of executives agree that reputational risk and social networking should be a board room issue, only 15% say it actually is.

4.) Windows 7: Can Microsoft reboot its reputation? (Los Angeles Times) -- With more than 8 million "beta testers" using Windows 7 since January and dozens of reviews already published, virtually every aspect of Microsoft's new operating system is already public knowledge prior to this morning's "launch" -- except one. Can Windows 7 repair Microsoft's reputation and trigger enough sales to pull the technology sector out of the economic funk?