Corporate Social Responsibility: The Feelgood Factor

Author: The Economist
Source: The Economist Special Report
Year: 2008
Company Name: TNT

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Abstract:

When catastrophic floods hit Bangladesh last November, TNT's emergency-response team was ready. The logistics giant, with headquarters in Amsterdam, has 50 people on standby to intervene anywhere in the world at 48 hours' notice. This is part of a five-year-old partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN's agency that fights hunger. The team has attended to some two dozen emergencies, including the Asian tsunami in 2004. “We're just faster,” says Ludo Oelrich, the director of TNT's “Moving the World” programme. Emergency help is not TNT's only offering. Volunteers do stints around the world on secondment to WFP and staff are encouraged to raise money for the programme (they generated €2.5m last year). There is knowledge transfer, too: TNT recently improved the school-food supply chain in Liberia, increasing WFP's efficiency by 15-20%, and plans to do the same in Congo. Why does TNT do these things?