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Timberland to visit Dartmouth Tuck MBA Students
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Description:
On April 8, 2009 Timberland's CSR team will visit Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. We look forward to giving these future leaders an overview of our CSR strategy and will dialogue with them on Just Means before and after the visit.
For our other Just Means stakeholders, feel free to join this discussion online!
Please note: this event is primarily designed for Dartmouth Tuck MBA students. Timberland often receives requests to visit student groups and reviews them on a quarterly basis. Unfortunately we are not able to accommodate all requests. If your school is interested, please let us know by emailing us at csrinfo@timberland.com.
Welcome Dartmouth Tuck MBA students! We're interested in your comments about our CSR programs and hope you will visit our Report pages (accessible from our Just Means homepage) to review and comment on our Q4 and year end 2008 performance in the following categories:
- Q4 2008 Dashboard
- Q4 2008 Energy Data
- Q4 2008 Product Data
- Q4 2008 Workplace Data
- Q4 2008 Service Data
- Q4 2008 Factory List
We're also interested in your feedback - here's a specific question to kick off our dialogue: What role do you think CSR plays in building a brand?
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Recent Comment
Itamar Goldminz | Posted: 6 April 2009
It seems to me that Timberland is doing a lot of really impressing things in these areas so I think it is worth investing the little extra time and effort to communicate them effectively.
I felt a strong disconnect regarding how seriously Timberland takes this issue between the actual content, which suggests that they do, and the way it is presented, which suggest that they don't.
Just a few examples:
- the quoted file sized of the reports are off by a factor of 1000
- a lot of the pages look like they've been taken from a power point presentation or a cleaned up excel spreadsheet
- there're tons of data in each page, distributed all ove,r which makes it very hard to understand what's important and what's not.
I think that presenting the key objectives and achievement in each focus area in a clean, concise and consistent manner would have communicated the efforts and results way more effectively
Carolyn Zern | Posted: 6 April 2009
Just to serve as a data point to Sylvie's comment, Patagonia does a great job of providing information on their pre- and post-consumer recycling programs - without it appearing to be a pure marketing ploy - and they have definitely earned loyalty from me for that. My guess is that I'm not alone. That said, I think Timberland's program is highly commendable and agree with Jenny that they might benefit from aligning their CSR efforts more closely with their branding.
Laura Miller | Posted: 6 April 2009
There has been a significant increase in the amount of organic cotton sourced in 2008 compared to 2007. The analysis states that this is partly due to it being a product feature valued by customers. Has the increased use of organic cotton impacted the cost of apparel? How has it been determined that customers value this feature - are they willing to pay more for apparel with organic cotton?
Sylvie Liberman | Posted: 6 April 2009
I don't necessarily agree. I think once a company starts marketing their CSR initiatives to the public it is easy for outsiders to perceive this as a PR ploy instead of a sincere company effort. And this could really threaten the good work that is being done internally.
I'm also not so sure how many more people will buy Timberland products simply because they know that it is a socially responsible company. Sure, I believe it can build brand loyalty and credibility but does this really boost long-term sales and outweigh the costs associated?
Oliver Perez | Posted: 6 April 2009
To build on Jenny's point, are you finding it more difficult to implement CSR initiatives in today's economic environment? How do you break the tie when a CSR initiative may negatively affect meeting a short term profit goal?
Oliver Perez | Posted: 6 April 2009
I was really intrigued by the Green Index and was trying to find additional information. Unfortunately the two links in the Q4 report didn't lead to additional info.
It seems this is a proprietary Index, is it proprietary to Timberland or is it a widely used industry standard?
Is there an effort on Timberland's part to have this become an industry wide practice?
I definitely like the move to rework the metric against product leaving manufacturing facilities vs. just indexing to sales.
Alanna Hynes | Posted: 6 April 2009
I second Jenny's point. I do feel that in general the Timberland consumer is not very aware of the many initiatives Timberland is pursuing pertaining to sustainability. As these issues become an ever increasing consumer focus this not only provides the opportunity for branding but to expand market share as consumers act on these new preferences to buy sustainable products.
Alanna Hynes | Posted: 6 April 2009
In reading through the Workplace Data I was surprised to see the dramatic decrease in the percentage of shoes manufactured in high risk factories from 2007 to the end of 2008. What allows you to achieve such tremendous change in such a short time and do you think that some of these competencies can be used to further other justmeans initiatives?
John Davidson | Posted: 6 April 2009
Along those lines, could you talk to the decision to prepare quarterly, less visually-dynamic reports with fully designed reports once every 24 months? How did you determine that this was the preferable way to communicate your results to stakeholders? How have stakeholders responded to the quarterly reports? (e.g., are you engaging fewer stakeholders more deeply or have you seen engagement grow across all stakeholder groups)
Jenny Farrelly | Posted: 5 April 2009
along these lines, what kind of questions and concerns does timberland hear from their investors in terms of the CSR and sustainability efforts?
