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Companies have long marketed themselves as friends and neighbors, but can companies care? Smart businesses are driven by an ethic of service that generates loyalty and creates powerful competitive advantage. But those who say they care create high expectations that they had better meet, says HOW contributor Marc Gunther.

A movement toward fuller market transparency is affecting consumer goods and the companies that produce them, as ecological impacts matter now more than ever, says Daniel Goleman in a Leading Green story. So leaders need to be informed about what’s being said online about their products, and companies need to deeply engage with their communities.

While a leader’s job is to influence others’ behavior, this effort is made more difficult because people can innately resist change and control, says Peter Bregman in a recent Harvard Business Publishing column. So how should leaders avoid resistance altogether? Give employees control. Let them make decisions, he says.

President Barack Obama has taken bold steps to change America's direction on energy and the environment. But can he rise to the challenge in the green arena? No matter how admirable his achievements on green spending, policy and personnel, success will require inspirational leadership that drives bottom-up change, says HOW contributor Andrew Shapiro.

Corporate apologies can be a powerful force for defusing antagonism, helping both sides see what happened and even aiding organizations to correct mistakes and build relationships. But the apology must be real and lead to true reform. As soon as customers sense that a mea culpa is no more than a couple of fancy Latin words, forgiveness will turn to mistrust, says HOW contributor Erik Sherman. And in the process, the company will have betrayed its values and injured itself in the market.

“Trust in our leaders and institutions is at an all time low, so how do you engender trust within your business?” asks executive coach and author Blaire Palmer in an HR Zone column. The solution? Coach and develop the people in your organization to trust more readily and be more trustworthy themselves, she says.

If you're feeling down and all you want is to be cheered up, don't call Mitchell Feiger, the CEO of MB Financial Inc. Why? Feiger employs open and brutally honest communication as a central strategy to keep workers at all levels of the company informed and engaged. He says that if you help employees understand where they can help the company, they will.

Creating a great product that improves the lives of your customers is essential, but isn't enough. You also need to use principles that people respect, say HOW contributors Haley Rushing and Roy Spence. Despite tough times, there’s hope in how conscious business leaders are stepping up to create businesses that serve a purpose beyond making money.

Do we assume that "green" companies are inherently more ethical than traditional "brown" companies? asks Nick Ellis on GreenBiz.com. Apparently, we do. But as Ellis says, "Having worked with employers worldwide to find and secure the top green talent, it's become clear that not everyone embraces the same level of ethics."

Despite the belt-tightening happening across business as the economy struggles, a majority of corporate marketers said they expect their organizations to increase commitment to, and adoption of, sustainability initiatives during the next two to three years, found a new survey.