Aiming Higher: 25 Stories of How Companies Prosper by Combining Sound Management & Social Vision

In 1989, TV producer Norman Lear founded the Business Enterprise Trust to recognize and honor corporate social responsibility. In his foreword to this book, commissioned by the trust, he writes that ""those businesses which actively serve their many constituencies in creative, morally thoughtful ways also... serve their shareholders best. Companies... do well by doing good."" The book's 25 chapters illustrating this premise are divided into six topical sections: blending product innovation with social concern, business in the inner city, workplace diversity, unleashing the best in employees, the rewards of corporate citizenship and remarkable business lives. The companies profiled range from Prudential, commended for paying ""Living Needs Benefits"" to its sick subscribers with desperate monetary problems, to Starbucks Coffee Company for extending benefits to every employee. The actions of these corporations are admirable, but in the aggregate these pieces written by Lear's TV collaborator Bollier seem like sheer boosterism, whereas any one alone would have made an inspiring magazine article. (Sept.)