The Good Company
Jan 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition
The movement for corporate social responsibility has won the battle of ideas. That is a pity, argues Clive Crook (interviewed here)
OVER the past ten years or so, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has blossomed as an idea, if not as a coherent practical programme. CSR
commands the attention of executives everywhere—if their public
statements are to be believed—and especially that of the managers of
multinational companies headquartered in Europe or the United States…
On the face
of it, this marks a significant victory in the battle of ideas. The
winners are the charities, non-government organisations and other
elements of what is called civil society that pushed for CSR
in the first place… In fact, their opponents never turned up…
CSR cannot
be a substitute for wise policies … In several
little-noticed respects, it is already a hindrance to them. If left
unchallenged, it could well become more so.
The above excerpts are from the introduction to the Economist‘s
(Jan. 22) survey of corporate social responsibility. Although we often disagree
with that libertarian magazine’s placing all its faith in markets, it
does well to slow down the paradoxically politically correct CSR bandwagon that leads corporations to supplant governments.