Business leaders are beginning to understand how their professional behavior needs to be linked to the corporation code of ethics. The awareness for good corporate citizenship is advocated. Companies are creating formal written statements expressing corporate values and distributing it to all personnel to make them aware of the level of expected behavior across the company.  The application of the expected behavior appears to have become a goal for well-known businesses and many of the Fortune 500 such as Google.

Google sees opportunities to reduce its demand and direct costs for power consumption to effectively continue to grow and support its business needs. “Currently, very little of the world’s power is from renewable like wind and solar. We’re working on changing that by buying electricity directly from wind farms near our data centers. We get clean energy at competitive prices, the wind farm owners get the money they need to finance new clean energy facilities and together we make the grid a little bit greener” (Google Green). Google has set goals for the organization to achieve over the next few years. Google has established that it wants more than 35% of its energy to come from renewable energy sources. Google is also focused on reducing the environmental impact that is caused by their global presence across their office worldwide. “Our commitment to reducing environmental impact extends to our offices worldwide. Most of our on-campus green initiatives were started by Googlers, and have now grown into company-wide efforts. From the solar panels on our roofs to our bike-to-work program, these initiatives eliminate the equivalent of more than 10,000 metric tons of CO2 per year” (Google Green).

Google is supportive in creating “greener” buildings for its employees. “Our buildings are designed and constructed to create as healthy and environmentally-friendly a workplace for our employees as possible, so they can thrive and innovate. We’re also constantly experimenting to find new ways of improving our work environment” (Google Green).

Google has gained a lot of benefits and praises for its ‘Google Green’ program that includes many of the Google initiatives focused on their support for social and environmental responsibilities. Google has been recognized globally for investing in alternative energy. Google has attracted more customers as a result of their support for the ‘Google Green’ initiatives.  Google provides ‘green’ buildings for its employees and renewable energy such as solar panels to power the buildings. Google provides electric cars and diesel powered shuttle buses for its employees – free of charge. Google’s support for a social work environment has made it one of the more attractive employers in the world for people to work for. Google has benefited from attracting top talent to come and work for them.  Google offers a relaxed, friendly and supportive work place that includes employee friendly policies such as a dog policy. Google philanthropy has received support from many under serviced parts of the globe and from numerous international organizations for their efforts in giving back to the community.

Both socially and environmentally, Google has done and will probably continue to do a good job. In these two areas, its clear that Google sees both a responsibility as well as a business benefit and has shown to embrace both with much of their initiatives and investments. The investments have included creating more socially responsible work areas. Google continues to show commitment to the environment with eco-friendly products and reducing their carbon footprint.