Library facts poll
May 5th, 2008 by Chad Boeninger
Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ...American Electric Power releases 2nd corporate sustainability report
April 23rd, 2008 by Chad BoeningerFrom the Report Alert:
American Electric Power has published its second corporate sustainability report - “Working Together For A Brighter Future.” available from www.aep.com/cr. This year’s report highlights the progress the company has made since implementing its CSR strategy and addresses issues that affect AEP’s ongoing sustainability including climate change; environmental performance; public policy; energy security, reliability and growth; work force issues; stakeholder engagement and leadership, management and strategy. As part of the company’s focus on sustainability, AEP management met with more than 100 stakeholders during the last year to receive input about the company’s performance, reporting process and its business practices. Stakeholders participating included state and federal regulators, power plant neighbors, environmental and conservation advocates, customers, employees, investors, community leaders and representatives from academia. The report was prepared according to G3 Reporting Principles established by the Global Reporting Initiative, a voluntary reporting framework used by organizations around the world as the basis for sustainability reporting.
This report might be useful for cluster students working on the “greening of business”project. You can get the report directly from AEP’s website. To find other similar reports, go to the Corporate Register to search and browse reports. You can find other resources on corporate responsibility, citizenship, and green business on the Biz Wiki.
Adapting to Climate Change: A Business Approach
April 22nd, 2008 by Chad BoeningerFrom the Pew Center on Global Climate Change:
Adapting to Climate Change: A Business Approach
Prepared for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change
April 2008By:
Frances G. Sussman and J. Randall Freed
ICF InternationalThis report outlines a sensible business approach to analyzing and adapting to the physical risks of climate change. It focuses on a critical first step in assessing these climate impacts: understanding the potential risks to business and the importance of taking action to mitigate those risks. Not all businesses need to take action now; this paper develops a qualitative screening process to assess whether a business is likely to be vulnerable to the physical risks associated with climate change, and whether a more detailed risk assessment is warranted.
The report can be downloaded here. (PDF)
There is also a related report called “Corporate Strategies That Address Climate Change” that can be downloaded from Pew as well.
Time Magazine Special Report on the environment
April 22nd, 2008 by Chad BoeningerThis week’s time magazine is focusing on the environment:
So far the U.S. has largely sat out the war against climate change—but that can change. We have a plan for making America the global leader on global warming
The article is a good read, and might give business researchers a good amount of information about environmental issues. Of particular interest to the business researcher is the Top Green Companies and the Top Green Websites.
Sources for Green Business
April 21st, 2008 by Chad BoeningerThe clusters are working on the topic of “the greening of business.” To assist with the topic, I have added a number of links to the Corporate Responsibility, Citizenship, and Green Business Guide in the Biz Wiki. The list is not exhaustive, but should be sufficient if your just beginning your research. If you have a source that might be worth adding, please contact me.
Analysis of the Social Networking environment
April 4th, 2008 by Chad BoeningerAs the clusters are working on the social networking industry, I’ve put together a list of some good places to look.
Mintel Reports. Contains a market research report titled “Social Networking and Connectivity in the Digital Age - US - January 2008″.
TableBase. Contains tables and statistics. Try searching for Facebook of MySpace as keywords.
Pew Internet & American Life Project. Has a number of useful reports on how people use the web.
Faulkner’s Advisory for IT Studies. Contains articles on a variety of technology topics.
Gartner. Contains news and research reports on the information technology industry.
Google Blog Search. Good for searching blogs on topics. It’s also useful to sort search results by date.
The economics of ethanol
April 2nd, 2008 by Chad BoeningerThe Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has just released a publication titled “Ethanol: Is Corn the Golden Fuel?”. The brief report summarizes the ethanol debate in a one page document. The report also provides links statistics from the USDA and the Department of Energy.
I’d like your help in teaching 160 business students this Friday
March 31st, 2008 by Chad BoeningerThis Friday I am giving the sophomore business clusters and orientation to business research and resources, as I do at the beginning of every quarter. Some of the research topics are easier than others for a librarian to teach. In general, the larger the industry (automobile, airlines, retail, music) the easier it is to use business databases to find the necessary information. Likewise, it’s generally easier to teach the students how to use the necessary databases if they have topics that will actually work with them.
This quarter, the first project is the social networking industry. Needless to say, you can’t exactly find company financials for Facebook in Hoover’s since it is a private company, and the most appropriate NAICS classification for the industry is “Internet Content Providers.” I’ve got a few ideas of places to go for articles, but I thought I would ask other experts in social networking (my fellow librarians) where they might look for information. The project description is below, and I would love to show my students how librarians used a social software (this blog) to do research on the social networking industry. Please leave a comment below if you’d like to help out. This will also be cross-posted on my Business Blog.
Your team is to conduct extensive research on the history, current condition, and future of the social networking industry. You are expected to make extensive use of library as well as internet resources for this study. PLEASE REMEMBER: It is always our expectation that you back up your findings with the data found in your research, and that you make EXPLICIT REFERENCE to numbers where necessary.
In particular, you will answer the following questions:
1. How do social networking firms make money?
2. Two of the main competitors in this field are facebook.com and myspace.com. Which one stands the best chance of winning this competitive battle?
3. Other than the threat they pose to each other, what is the biggest threat these two organizations face?Each observation or recommendation you make must be substantiated by the research you conduct, with clear justifications provided in all cases.
Fortune interview with Steve Jobs
March 6th, 2008 by Chad BoeningerFortune has published an interview with Steve Jobs. I’d definitely recommend looking at it for understanding what makes the CEO of one of the world’s most admired companies tick. Some excepts are below:
On market research:
“We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made [when launching Apple’s retail stores]. But we never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great products. “
On work:
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the [executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is.
On management:
My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.
Construction Industry sees decreases in spending
March 4th, 2008 by Chad BoeningerThere are a few cluster groups working on the home improvement and construction industries. This article from MSNBC might be interesting to them:
Construction spending took its biggest nosedive in 14 years and manufacturing activity contracted, fresh trouble signs for a struggling economy.
The Commerce Department reported Monday that construction spending plunged by 1.7 percent in January. Builders slashed spending on residential projects, but the weakness spread beyond that ailing sector. There were cutbacks in spending on, among other things, hotels and motels, highways and various projects by state and local governments.
