{"id":306932,"date":"2010-02-11T10:16:20","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T15:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.southernstudies.org,2010:\/\/5.12136"},"modified":"2010-02-17T10:53:44","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T15:53:44","slug":"toyota-totals-its-corporate-social-responsibility-cred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/306932","title":{"rendered":"Toyota totals its corporate social responsibility cred"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"toyota_crash.gif\"<\/a><\/span>By Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest<\/i><\/p>\n

It would not surprise me if the people who do public relations for
\nToyota are flipping through their old scrapbooks to cheer themselves up
\namid the worst crisis in the company’s history.<\/p>\n

They might be looking longingly at the 2003 Business Week<\/em> cover story<\/a> headlined: “Can Anything Stop Toyota: An Inside Look at How It’s Reinventing the Auto Industry.” Or the 2006 New York Times<\/em> paean<\/a> entitled “Toyota Shows Big Three How It’s Done.” Perhaps they are going back even further to the 1997 love letter<\/a> from Fortune<\/em>: “How Toyota Defies Gravity.”<\/p>\n

These days Toyota is instead experiencing the unbearable heaviness
\nof being exposed as just another unscrupulous automaker that, whether
\nthrough incompetence or greed, puts many of its customers behind the
\nwheel of a deathtrap.<\/p>\n

New revelations<\/a>
\nthat the company knew about the defective gas pedals for years before
\ntaking action are all the more scandalous because Toyota had a
\nlongstanding reputation not only for business prowess but also for
\nsocial responsibility.<\/p>\n

The company, of course, fostered this image. Its website proclaims<\/a>:
\n“Toyota has sought harmony between people, society, and the global
\nenvironment, as well as the sustainable development of society, through
\nmanufacturing. Since its foundation, Toyota has continuously worked to
\ncontribute to the sustainable development of society through provision
\nof innovative and high-quality products and services that lead the
\ntimes.”<\/p>\n

All big corporations make similar declarations, but Toyota managed
\nto convince outside observers of its pure heart. Last year the
\nEthisphere Institute included the automaker on its list<\/a> of “the World’s Most Ethical Companies.” Toyota is ranked<\/a> 14th<\/sup>
\non the “Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World.” And it
\nreceived the highest score among automakers in a 2006 CERES assessment<\/a> of corporate governance changes adopted by large corporations to deal with climate change.<\/p>\n

Toyota’s environmental reputation is not completely unblemished. In 2007 the company incurred the wrath<\/a>
\nof green groups for its opposition to an effort to toughen fuel economy
\nstandards in the United States (a stance it modified in response to the
\npressure). In 2003 Toyota agreed<\/a>
\nto pay $34 million to settle U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
\ncharges that it violated the Clean Air Act by selling 2.2 million
\nvehicles with defective smog-control computers.<\/p>\n

Overall, however, Toyota was regarded as a much more environmentally
\nenlightened company than Detroit’s Big Three. In fact, its successful
\nefforts to bring hybrids into the auto industry mainstream made it
\nsomething of a corporate hero in green circles. Michael Brune, who was
\nrecently named the new executive director of the Sierra Club, brags<\/a> that he and his wife have been driving a Prius since 2004.<\/p>\n

Toyota’s more laudable stances on sustainability issues did not
\nprevent it from being completely retrograde when it came to respecting
\nthe collective bargaining rights of its U.S. employees. It has
\nsuccessfully kept unions out of its heavily-subsidized American plants
\nand has taken advantage<\/a> of contingent workers to keep down costs in those operations.<\/p>\n

Just as good environmental policies do not automatically lead to
\ngood labor practices, the current safety scandal shows that a company
\ncan be green and totally irresponsible at the same time.  Despite
\nToyota’s claim about promoting “harmony between people, society, and
\nthe global environment,” it appears the company put its business
\ninterests ahead of the safety of its customers and others with whom
\nthey share the road.<\/p>\n

The automaker’s safety scandal is another indication that voluntary
\ncorporate social responsibility policies go only so far. It is only
\nthrough rigorous government regulation, backed by aggressive
\nenvironmental and other public interest activism, that major
\ncorporations can be kept honest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest It would not surprise me if the people who do public relations for Toyota are flipping through their old scrapbooks to cheer themselves up amid the worst crisis in the company’s history. They might be looking longingly at the 2003 Business Week cover story headlined: “Can Anything Stop Toyota: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4533,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4533"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}