2011
Laurie Bassi TV interview
Yesterday morning, Laurie was interviewed on KUSA regarding Good Company.
You can watch the interview here.
2011
Do our Good Company ratings predict stock performance?
Yes.
The grade that a company earned on the Good Company Index™ is a powerful predictor of subsequent stock performance. We examined this question this summer, one year after we assigned company grades, to see how companies had fared in the market over the 12 month period that had followed.
To ensure that we were comparing only similar companies to one another, we looked at all “industry-matched pairs” (pairs of companies in the same industry) in the Fortune 100. We found twelve pairs in which the companies’ Good Company grades differed by one or more grade levels (for example, a grade of B versus a grade of C).
Across those twelve pairs, the stock price of the company with the higher grade outperformed that of its competitor with the lower grade by an average of 19.8 percentage points in the subsequent 12-month period.
For example, in June 2010 (when we finalized companies’ grades), Walgreen and CVS Caremark’s Good Company grades were a B- and D, respectively. In the 12 months following the assignment of those grades (June 2010 to June 2011), Walgreen’s stock price outpaced that of CVS by 30.7 percentage points.
Another example is Chevron and ExxonMobil: in June 2010, the companies’ grades were C+ and F, respectively. Between June 2010 and June 2011, Chevron’s stock return was 6.0 percentage points higher than that of ExxonMobil.
These are exciting findings for us. One of the main themes of our book is an exploration of the direction the world will be moving in the future, but this represents evidence that being a good company is already paying off.
This post originally appeared on the Good Company blog earlier this week.
2011
Video presentation of Good Company
Laurie Bassi spoke recently at Bellevue University regarding Good Company, its stories, research, and data. Click here to watch her full presentation.
2011
The story behind Good Company
Our book Good Company has been a very long time in the making. It all started back 23 years ago with a conversation that changed my life.
In those days, I was a young assistant professor of economics at Georgetown University. With my newly minted Ph.D. from Princeton in hand, I understood the rules of the game for someone in my position. First among them was publish or perish. Equally important was to do so in a way that was respected and valued by my profession – by doing research and publishing papers in prestigious journals based on complex mathematical modeling and sophisticated econometric analysis. I became totally immersed in my field and this perspective. I came to view the world and the people in it through a lens of simultaneous structural equations and elaborate statistical methodologies.
And then one day in 1988, I found myself in a steel mill in western Maryland. I was there interviewing workers about the “learning environment” at the mill. These interviews were a component of a well-funded research project I was fortunate to be working on – one that held the promise of getting some good papers published. My immediate task was to translate the findings of my interviews with workers into quantitative, coded data. It was definitely a “stretch assignment” for me, because truth be told, although I was a card-carrying labor economist, I had never been in a workplace anything like this before.
This steel mill was a pretty tough place. It was hot – probably at least in the low 90s – dirty, noisy, and dangerous. Workers were busy managing the flow of red-hot, molten metal as it moved between various pieces of massive processing machinery. And there I was in my neatly pressed pant suit, with a tasteful purse on my shoulder, and clip board and Cross pen in hand – interviewing workers in steel-toed boots, hard hats, work clothes covered in grime, with sweat running down their sooty faces. They were compliant and polite as I took them through one question after another about the extent and usefulness of the (virtually nonexistent) learning opportunities available to them through their work.
In the very last interview, I apparently asked one question too many. In a very respectful tone of voice, the fellow I was interviewing finally said to me, “Look lady, I can sum it up for you like this. I go home at the end of every day, whupped, tired and disgusted.”
That pretty much ended the interview – there was really nothing left to say. He thanked me for my interest, and I thanked him for his time.
As I drove home that night, his words played over and over again in my mind. I shared them with my husband, and I thought about them the next day and the day after. The raw honesty of what he said didn’t fit neatly into my data coding scheme, and I understood that no system of equations – no matter how sophisticated or elegant – could capture the grim reality this gentleman had shared with me.
Over the course of the weeks and months that followed, I began to think very differently about my work. It was no longer an academic exercise that would help me publish papers and get tenure. It was much more important than that. It was about the quality of people’s lives, and how they are shaped for good or for ill by their places of work. I also came to understand the profound effects our work places have on our lives outside of work, and indeed, the very society in which we live.
That conversation set me on a journey that ultimately led to Good Company. The book is a marriage of heart and head. It is, I believe, an important book. Here’s what my favorite professor at Princeton, Dr. Alan Blinder (former Vice Chairman, Board of Governors o f the Federal Reserve System), wrote about our book: “Close your eyes and wish that companies that were good to their employees, their customers, their communities, and the environment made more money than ‘the bad guys.’ Now open your eyes and read this fascinating book. Amazingly, Bassi, Frauenheim and McMurrer marshal evidence that it’s true. Read it and smile.”
I hope you will take the time to read it. And if you agree it is important, please consider helping us to get the word out by sharing it with colleagues, writing a blog post, posting a review on Amazon, or sending us a testimonial.
Thanks in advance for whatever support you can provide. I look forward to hearing from you.
(Note: this post was cross-posted from the Good Company blog.)
2011
CFO.com commentary on Good Company
CFO.com senior editor David McCann explored our new book Good Company in a recent blog post:
http://www.cfo.com/blogs/index.cfm/?d=07082011&t=1&month=7&year=2011
2011
Interested in ordering multiple copies of Good Company?
We’ll soon be placing our own order with the publisher (Berrett-Koehler) for our “authors’ copies” of Good Company. For a limited time we are able to share our authors’ savings (50% off the cover price) with you for bulk orders. We’ll send you autographed copies for $13.97 per copy (including free shipping within the US) for pre-orders of 10 or more copies.
Click here to place your bulk order or for more information.
If you’d like to read more about Good Company, we’d be happy to send you a preview copy of chapter 1. Just drop us an email at info@mcbassi.com.
(This post was sent via email to our monthly newsletter subscribers last week. Click here if you’d like to subscribe.)
2011
Good Company now available for pre-order
Exciting news as the publication process for our book continues to move right along: Good Company will be released on Labor Day 2011, and is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com and at other booksellers.
2011
Good Company book cover selected
Thanks to everyone who helped us choose the cover of our new book (Good Company) by voting in our poll a couple of weeks ago. We received lots of helpful and interesting thoughts on the pros and cons of all three options, with varying degrees of support for each of the possibilities.
After incorporating all of the feedback we received, the final cover design has now been chosen. This fall, keep an eye out for our book in bookstores – it’ll be the one with the GOLDEN EGG cover.
Thanks again!
2011
Help us choose the cover of our new book!
Our new book, Good Company: Business Success in the Worthiness Era, by Laurie Bassi, Ed Frauenheim, and Dan McMurrer, with Larry Costello, is scheduled for publication by Berrett-Koehler later this year.
We’re currently working with the publisher to select a cover design. We’re inviting all of McBassi’s loyal blog readers to share your thoughts on possible covers.
Please click here to vote now for the cover you think would be most effective.
Please note: time is short. The survey will close at the end of the day on Sunday, February 13, 2011, so don’t delay.
Once a final cover decision has been made, we’ll let everyone know on the blog.
2010
Hollywood, Twitter, and good sellers
One of the major themes of our new book Good Company is that multiple forces – including the power of social networking - are driving companies to become better employers, sellers, and stewards.
Better sellers can be trusted to offer high-quality goods and services to their customers at fair prices.
Earlier this week, the New York Times explored a related phenomenon in the movie industry, noting that the avalanche of Twitter reviews seems to have ended the “era of using marketing to trick consumers into seeing bad movies.”
In short, movie studios are increasingly being driven to be better sellers – or closer to “good company,” in our parlance.