Enterprise Excellence 2

In the News

Time magazine has included the founder of the SKS Microfinance, Vikram Akula, among its 2006 list of the 100 people who have the most transformative impact in the world today.

Akula uses advanced technology – smart cards – to make venture capital available to more of the 800 million people in India who live on less than $2 per day. This cash-free approach is both more efficient and safer.

SKS has become on of the world's fastest-growing microlenders and has dispensed of $52 million to 221,000 clients since 1998. Despite such rapid growth, its loan default rate is below 2%.

See the Special Issue of Time, 8th May 2006, p. 99.

The UK-based supermarket giant Tesco has withdrawn from Deregulate, the industry body set up last year to promote the total deregulation of Sunday trading.

Tesco denies that this move is motivated by a desire to improve its image in the face of the Competition Commission enquiry into monopolistic practices on the part of large supermarkets. Instead, Tesco claims, it has simply been listening to its customers – a recent survey it found out that 80% of its customers wanted more than six hours of shopping on a Sunday, but less than 12% wanted more than 12 hours.

The announcement of Tesco's withdrawal came just a day before Tesco's CEO Sir Terry Leahy unveiled his 'Community Plan'. Leahy first revealed that Tesco was working on this plan last month when he announced a 17% leap in profits, to a record £2.2 billion. One in every eight pounds spent in British retail now goes into the tills at Tesco.

The Community Plan outlines several environment-friendly initiatives: degradable plastic bags, wind turbines on top of stores, the opening of regional food counters, encouraging local suppliers and cutting down on deliveries.

Leahy's withdrawal announcement came on the same day David Cameron, leader of the UK's Conservative Party, made a speech at the annual Business in the Community conference in which he hit out at Tesco and other big companies for abusing their corporate power.

Cameron's attack reflects his agenda to 'stand up to big business'. For an article by Peter Heslam that assess this agenda, see the first item under the 'Resources' section of the ezine.

Business in the Community have just published a new Corporate Responsibility Index – see elsewhere on this page.

For more on the Tesco's Community Plan, click here. For a recent interview with Sir Terry Leahy, click here.

The renewed Keep Sunday Special Campaign forms part of the context in which public attitudes to Tesco's opening hours have been formed. This Campaign has produced a new booklet entitled Sunday, Monday – Is there a Difference?. Click here for more information.

As China becomes more material, growing numbers of Chinese are turning to religion for spiritual sustenance.

So claims Time magazine's Shanghai correspondent Hannah Beech, who reports that even the Chinese government admits that China now has more than 200 million worshippers of all faiths, double the number just nine years ago.

Could this be another nail in the coffin of the secularization myth that religion and modernization always travel in opposite directions?

Time's former Beijing Bureau Chief David Aikman appears to think so. His recent book Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power (Monarch) has been causing quite a stir in diplomatic circles.

Beech's article is 'Renewed Faith' in Time, 08-05-06.

Tony Snow, a friend of the Acton Institute, has been named White House press secretary. The Acton Institute is a high caliber think tank based in Grand Rapids and devoted to the study of religion and liberty.

Over the years, Snow has been an engaging and inspiring voice in the public debate about freedom, virtue and prosperity, insisting that these foundations of society are compatible with an objective morality.

An audio recording of a speech Snow made at the Acton Institute in 2001 entitled 'In God We Trust' can be ordered from the Institute. Contact details here www.acton.org

African political, business and civil society leaders are to meet in Cape Town for the World Economic Forum on Africa to discuss steps to encourage economic growth on the continent and launch a public-private partnership that aims to address the root causes of poverty.

More than 700 delegates are expected at the forum, which runs from 31 May to 2 June under the theme 'Going for Growth'.

Haiko Alfred, director for Africa of the World Economic Forum, said that this event 'will focus on the individual success stories driving growth and discuss ways to scale up these pockets of success'.

For more information, click here.

The Executive Director of UNICEF, the United Nation's Children's Fund, Ann Veneman, claims that poor nutrition among children threatens to become a worldwide catastrophe unless urgent action is taken.

At the launch of a new UNICEF report entitled Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition at the United Nations headquarters in New York at the beginning of May 2006, Ms Veneman said that millions of children's lives and futures are threatened through malnutrition: 'One underweight and undernourished child is an individual tragedy. But multiplied by tens of millions, under nutrition becomes a global threat to societies and to economies.'

Contrary to the way it was widely reported in the press, the report is not altogether gloomy. Although in Africa one in four children under five years old are underweight, China managed to cut its proportion of underweight children by more than half between 1990 and 2002.

To read the full UNICEF report, click here.

The third annual Global Monitoring Report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), subtitled Strengthening Mutual Accountability – Aid, Trade and Governance has been published by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

It identifies economic growth, better quality aid, trade reforms and better governance as crucial to achieving the MDGs.

This report, like the UNICEF one featured above, also contains some good news. There has been a reduction in child deaths in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, such as Mozambique. There has also been a reduction in HIV/AIDS infection rates in such high-prevalence countries as Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Click here for more information.

The results of the fourth annual Corporate Responsibility Index have been announced, with the publication of the Top 100 Companies that Count 2006 in the Sunday Times (7 May 2006).

A total of 131 companies participated in the Index this year, including 26 new companies, representing 4.2 million employees and a total turnover of over £686 billion. The average score across all participating companies is 84%. This represents a steady improvement – it was 68% in 2002.

Key trends emerging from this year's Index include an increase in the transparency of companies and in their commitment developing their human resources.

More details on this year's Corporate Responsibility Index, including key findings and emerging trends are available in the executive summary, available here.

To invite a writer for the Economist to give the sermon at the annual Christian Aid Week service at Canterbury Cathedral on 14th May 2006 is bound to set a cat amongst the pigeons.

The Economist's Edward Lucas castigated Christian anti-capitalism as being as absurd as a Christian distaste for the law of gravity. Christians with a concern for poverty ought to be enthusiastic supporters of faster economic growth, more competition and freer trade. International aid, by contrast, takes money from poor people in rich countries and gives it to rich people in poor countries.

Articles based on Lucas' sermon were published in The Times (15-05-06) and Church Times (12-05-06).

Edward Lucas (see above news item) may now be tempted to get Canterbury's Archbishop, rather than merely the activists who gathered in Canterbury, into the range of his attack.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, have unveiled a new report on urban life, entitled Faithful Cities.

The report comes two decades after the Faith in the City report, which attacked some of Margaret Thatcher's policies and was dismissed by her followers as a Marxist document.

The new report is sharply critical of what it sees as the widening gap between rich and poor: 'We live in one of the most economically unequal countries in Europe...the 'trickle down' promise of market forces [has] failed to deliver'.

It urged the government to implement a 'living wage', rather than the current minimum wage of £5.05 (US$9.5) per hour.

The report was produced after much consultation with those 'on the ground' in the inner cities, with input from from clergy, academics, activists, and leaders of other denominations and faith communities.

Religious faith is one of the richest and most enduring sources of dynamism and hope for the cities, the report noted, providing participation in civic life and social networks which could be called 'faithful capital'.

The report can be ordered from Amazon here.

Kenneth Lay, the founder of Enron, and Jeffrey Skilling, his former CEO, face long jail terms after a jury found them guilty of conspiring to commit one of the largest frauds in US corporate history. They will be sentenced on 11 September 2006.

Mr Lay, the son of a Baptist minister, is strong in his religious convictions and has been outspoken on the need for business people to adopt high ethical standards.

See, for instance, his words in Michael Novak's Business as a Calling, p. 23, or in his interview with The Door Magazine (here), which he uttered before scandal erupted.