Jon Lovett Quotes

People should be encouraged by things like awards given for corporate governance practices.

Transparency, accountability and sustainability have become the slogans of the market leaders. Companies carry out environmental and social audits to court the consumer, and even the bluest chips woo organisations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty.

There's been a sea change in our focus on corporate ethics. We've made more progress in the last three years than the previous 30.

Can companies just claim a total lack of political responsibility in how their technology is used in all instances? It's something that companies should be thinking about when they sell their technologies around the world.

What I would like to do is to leave behind a sustainable entity of a set of companies that operate in an exemplary manner in terms of ethics, values and continue what our ancestors left behind.

In America, we no longer have an institutionalized, organized way of calling business to task - of taking them to account for what they've done - and this is especially true in the cultural realm.

Shareholder meetings are not usually the occasion for utter candor - or for that matter, arch sarcasm - by chief executives.

Understanding how your business affects human rights and using that knowledge to shape appropriate policies and practices is crucial to achieving what should be the goal of all corporations - sustainable growth.

The history of business has shown that companies usually only regulate themselves if they're forced to by legislation, or out of self-interest - often in the shape of a marketable message that will help sell more products.

I pretty much believe, as everyone in the B Team does, that business must succeed beyond the bottom line. More important than profits is how you get to them. Measuring financial earnings and losses only is definitely not enough and has led us astray from creating a better world for all.

It took a generation for companies to recognise their responsibilities in terms of labour practices and another generation for them to recognise their environmental obligations.

Millennials are more aware of society's many challenges than previous generations and less willing to accept maximizing shareholder value as a sufficient goal for their work. They are looking for a broader social purpose and want to work somewhere that has such a purpose.

And also, more and more businesses really want to do the right thing. They feel better about themselves, their workers feel better, and so do their customers. I think this is equally true in the transnational corporations, but it is harder to express in those situations.

A great business has to have a conscience. You have to know who you are and who you are not.

I often say that shareholders should feel very responsible for how responsive corporations are to the public trust.

Sustainability includes how you run your business, and my bottom line includes how you treat your people. Sustainability starts with your staff.

Is it possible to run a big industrial corporation in a benevolent fashion? We see these days that even the hippest companies hide some rotten practices to make their profit margins work.

Whole Foods Market tries to embody all of the principles of conscious capitalism all the time, but like any person or company, we sometimes fall short.

Shareholders have the right and obligation to set the parameters of corporate behavior within which management pursues profit.

Business must be the solution, not the problem.

The question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.

Industry leaders have the power to set standards.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.

The pendulum of capitalism has swung way too far to only trying to maximize the profit of shareholders rather than many of the traditional other virtues and accomplishments of a company.