Productivity & Trade Briefs

With labor markets tightening and labor costs rapidly rising in Central and Eastern Europe, the advantage of lower labor costs compared to the rest of the continent will further shrink over time and could mean that businesses will shift operations elsewhere.

The proactive agency costs generated by mutual fund advisers that hold large concentrations of delegated voting power can be partially mitigated by the SEC.

This year’s C-Suite Challenge painted a clear picture of how corporations’ most senior executives see the future, and what priorities and interventions are required to succeed in it. We have been looking at the insights through an Innovation & Productivity lens to help Innovation leaders best influence the priorities and efforts ahead.

"Save the web: technology should serve humanity, not undermine its core values and institutions" is just one of John Metselaar's takeaways from this year's Lisbon Web Summit. As more than half the world's population becomes digitally connected, industry, governments, citizens and academia need to work together to keep the "digital peace."

internal communication professionals need to do a better job of demonstrating their value to senior leadership. To be considered trusted advisers and counselors by executives and senior leaders, internal communication professionals should, among other things, assess and measure their value, bring unique insights, and better understand the financial metrics used by business leaders.

The Conference Board has launched an expanded initiative to track and benchmark societal investments, and their resulting impact, extending the organization’s 75 years of leadership in corporate citizenship research.

In this heightened environment of activism, quantitative investing and shorting, understanding who owns your company and why and even more importantly which firms do not own the stock is information that company management and the board should have in their arsenal.

The Conference Board recently released its annual study on the state of corporate sustainability disclosure around the world. The research assesses environmental and social disclosure practices of the 250 largest publicly traded companies domiciled in each of the 10 largest economies (by GDP at purchasing power parity) in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. As we look to Asia, what are key trends in reporting practices across the region? Where do we see the biggest challenges ahead?