Company joins forces with Christine Arena — author of The High-Purpose Company, the groundbreaking new book about profitable CSR strategies.
Cambridge, MA, January 15, 2007 — The leading innovator in performance solutions, collaboration, and change management — Interaction Associates (IA) — has announced a strategic partnership with Christine Arena, a foremost authority on corporate responsibility effectiveness.
IA will collaborate with Arena to help clients pursue integrated corporate responsibility strategies in-line with profit and growth goals.
"Corporate responsibility is an integral strategic focus for an increasing number of companies," says Linda Dunkel, President and CEO of Interaction Associates. "Christine has literally written the book on CSR strategy — one that clearly demonstrates the difference between effective and ineffective approaches. She understands what companies need to do to make a difference in this space. We're experts at how to make that happen within organizations. The combination is very powerful," said Dunkel.
Arena is a noted corporate strategist and author of the new book, The High-Purpose Company: The Truly Responsible (and Highly Profitable) Firms That Are Changing Business Now, published by Collins in January 2007. She is also author of the award-winning Cause for Success: 10 Companies That Put Profits Second and Came in First.
In The High-Purpose Company, Arena dispels common myths about CSR and demonstrates how and why certain approaches succeed whereas others fail — drawing on extensive research of 75 companies that invest millions annually in the practice. The book enables readers to easily distinguish between true and false corporate responsibility, and also lays out a strategic path toward positive change and superior performance. According to Publishers Weekly, "(Arena's) well-presented evidence buttresses a forceful argument that companies that care about more than making money can still succeed."
A key insight from The High-Purpose Company is the integral link between collaboration and corporate responsibility effectiveness. "The companies producing the very best quality social, environmental and economic returns from their CSR investments — including IKEA, Patagonia, Eileen Fisher, Wegmans Food Markets and others — have highly collaborative cultures," explains Arena. "This is no coincidence. In order for coherent CSR strategies to flourish, consensus must be built and organizational silos must break down so that everyone in the company can begin working together towards a common goal or higher purpose."
Interaction Associates and Arena have developed a unique auditing tool that enables companies to monitor and improve their corporate responsibility performance over time. The tool combines the analytical model that Arena previously developed as a means of measuring CSR effectiveness with Interaction Associates' methods for both assessing and building collaborative capabilities within companies.
Says Linda Dunkel, "The best news is that authentic CSR is a change-related process that can be taught and this partnership provides companies with the value-added combination of Christine's expertise and the nearly 40 years of experience in workplace collaboration and change consulting from Interaction Associates."
About Interaction Associates
Interaction Associates, Inc. (IA) is an employee-owned firm with more than 15 years experience innovating new directions in corporate social responsibility. The firm is a leading provider of solutions that help Fortune 1000 clients meet their most daunting challenges — from improving employee performance to optimizing business solutions, navigating change, developing high potential leaders, and fostering genuine and strategic collaboration across an organization.
IA was the first firm of its kind in 1993 to fund a nonprofit institute — the Interaction Institute for Social Change — a premier designer & facilitator of large-scale, multi-stakeholder social change efforts. The institute's work has benefited hundreds of organizations and thousands of people around the world.
IA's president and CEO, Linda Dunkel, was selected as one of America's Best Bosses in 2006, an honor bestowed on just 18 people nationally by the workplace practices clearinghouse, Winning Workplaces, to recognize the most innovative and inspirational leaders of midsize companies.
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