Corporate Community Involvement - New book from Veronica Scheubel 16 Mar 2010

Building on the authors' own extensive global experience at Nokia and E.ON, as well as featuring interviews with leading practitioners from businesses such as IBM, Microsoft, GlaxoSmithKline, Telefonica, Ericsson, and Deutsche Bank, this book offers the first-ever "how to" roadmap for managers on the comprehensive implementation of strategic Community Involvement inside their companies.

The book highlights proven best-practice approaches, effective methods, and concise tools to help managers "get there faster" and "get it right first time." It shows how to: conduct a current state analysis and devise a strategy, organize staffing and budgets, integrate Corporate Community Involvement throughout the business and create high-profile programs, partner across sectors, measure and evaluate results, communicate successful activities, and overcome challenges. It is designed to be practical - for those who want to act upon what they have read. It will fill a long-neglected niche as a day-to-day reference guide for practitioners. Representatives from other sectors, notably government, international agencies, NGOs, and academia, will come to understand companies' internal requirements for cross-sector collaboration programs in the community better. And students interested in this field will be better equipped to start careers.

Advance praise
The authors are to be congratulated. I can't imagine a better guidebook for any company that plans to enter or improve its community relations. Philip Kotler, S.C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management

Lakin and Scheubel have succeeded wonderfully in bringing all of the essential elements in community engagement into one very readable and hands-on book that any company attempting to reset their corporate citizenship will find immediately and essentially useful. Professor Brad Googins, Department of Organizational Studies, Boston College, and former Director, Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College

Lakin and Scheubel are expert practitioners with years of highly relevant experience working in important companies. In this timely, practical and topical guide they generously share their insights in an engaging and accessible style. Adrian Hodges, Former Managing Director, IBLF, and currently VP Corporate Responsibility, GlaxoSmithKline

About the authors
Veronica Scheubel originally came from Marketing at Nokia and then built up and managed Nokia's global Community Involvement program in more than 20 countries, including global external and internal stakeholder communications and engagement; cause-related marketing activities; program evaluation and reporting; and capacity building within a global partnership network. Before joining the corporate world, Veronica worked with a number of non-profit organizations in Canada. After leaving Nokia, she acquired a Master's degree in Organization Consulting. Now a self-employed consultant, trainer, and coach based in Germany, one focus of her work is Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability as a strategic, integrated way of doing business and a catalyst for organizational change and transformation.

Nick Lakin, a law graduate, worked in Corporate Communications for over ten years, leading external and internal relations. He was then asked to set up the global Community Involvement practice at E.ON, one of the world's largest investor-owned power and gas companies, operating in over 25 markets, including the US, Russia, and a number of European countries. At the time of publishing, he is Vice President, Marketplace & Community, at E.ON AG. It was while here that he saw the difficulties organizations experience in deciding what they should and should not do in the communities where they operate and the importance of inspiring and motivating employees in every part of the business to bring Community Involvement to life.

You can buy the book at
Greenleaf
Stanford UP
amazon.com

If you'd like to add your own Community Involvement best practice stories, ask the authors questions, or want to comment, clarify, or correct anything you've read in the book, you can do so in the book's discussion forum on www.cciguide.com. We'd love to hear from you.

Contact
ESB Event Sport Business
ESB Marketing Consult AG
Andreas Gußmann
Head of International Relations
Brunneggstr. 9
CH-9001 St. Gallen, Switzerland
www.esb-online.com
gussmann[at]esb-online.com