Our Mission
The financial crisis of 2008 punctuated the impact that corporations and those who run them have on the global economy and main street America. Corporate conduct impacts shareholders, line workers, corporate professionals, consumers, and future generations.
While there was a time in history where we may have blindly relied on industry to provide our health care, process food for our tables, and transport us, that time has passed. History has demonstrated that corporate decision-makers acting to maximize their own short-term gains now make decisions that place the long-term viability of corporations at risk while causing harm to the community at large. Mainstream companies that were once synonymous with the American dream have been held captive by officers and directors whose executive compensation plans have encouraged them to skirt the law and moral and ethical obligations to those who depend on them, for employment, investment, goods and services.
The financial crisis is one manifestation of the wrongdoing. Consumers are plagued by unsafe drugs, contaminated foods, unsafe means of transportation, and financial products that were concocted with ulterior motives.
Corporate officers and directors have balanced the benefits of violating the law not only against the potential damage to their corporations but also against their own personal gain. Laws that at one time may have provided a deterrence against wrongful conduct no longer provide such deterrence. While violations of federal contracting laws, equal employment laws, wage and hour laws, and federal securities laws can have a devastating impact on their victims, the penalties often do not deter officers and directors from acting in their own interest.
Longtime employees who once relied on their employers for a source of income and retirement monies have been rocked by job loss ultimately attributable to short-term decision-making by corporate leaders. Highly skilled professionals are now out on the streets looking for work.
Voices for Corporate Responsibility was formed with the following mission goals:
- To help corporate employees, including professionals, to stand up against officer and director decision-making that is motivated by their own personal greed and short-term interests;
- To encourage corporate employees, including professionals, to participate in regulatory and legislative reform that protects their right to address conduct that adversely impacts the corporation, shareholders and consumers;
- To prompt corporate employees, including professionals, to recognize wrongdoing in their own place of employment, and to take action;
- To enable corporate employees, including professionals, who have lost their jobs or have been injured as a result of wrongful conduct, to network with one another in order to make themselves whole.
Voices for Corporate Responsibility is a project for professionals who want their corporations to behave with integrity for the long-term benefit of the company, shareholders, consumers, and the community.