Rita Sully writes in a Web journal, or blog, almost every week.

Blogs, which have proliferated on the Internet in recent years, generally feature the personal feelings and experiences of their writers. Sully's blog, however, has a somewhat different theme: corporate social responsibility (CSR).

As the CSR manager for Asia-Pacific and Japan at Hewlett-Packard, Sully finds it exciting to blog about the news from HP's community investment projects, such as its Technology for Teaching grant recipients, or progress regarding environmental standards and CSR.

In the meantime, she's helping to push HP, which does extensive business in China, to encourage recycling of its products and give back to the communities it relies on to manufacture its goods.

The best part of blogging, Sully writes, is that it's interactive. Sully has an area for comments on her postings where she can receive thoughts, insights, questions and general comments from readers. She believes this can make HP's CSR activities more effective and meaningful.

She also receives numerous emails regarding some of the topics and themes she has raised. But "why not post these directly on the blog?" she wrote in a posting on August 11.

Talking it out

For Sully, CSR is a topic in need of extensive discussions and substantial effort to work. "Different companies interpret CSR differently," she said in an interview with Chinese media in July.

As a corporation is made up of individuals and its decision making processes  internally and externally  are driven by people, including consumers, policy makers, employees and shareholders, it's an organization driven by what its employees and customers demand, she notes. CSR, accordingly, has become a shared responsibility.

That is why Sully spends much of her time having discussions with numerous people at HP and outside HP to define its CSR context, work out HP's CSR strategy and evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy.

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