Its raison d’ętre was captured at a recent conference I organised for the Washington DC think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, which encourages research by scholars who are more interested in changing public policy than tilting at windmills.

The speakers were ideologically diverse, from Wal-Mart hating professors who view low consumer prices as too high a price for union workers to pay, to reflexive defenders of the free market at any cost who see chief executives that embrace corporate social responsibility as reincarnations of Neville Chamberlain.

The conference posed a question considered in bad taste at most corporate social responsibility celebration fests: is CSR serious business?

Upcoming Ethical Corporation conferences & events:
How to manage Social & Environmental Risk in the mining, oil & gas, steel and other heavy industries
London, 22-23 March 2010 The Responsible Business Summit 2010
Novotel West Hotel, London, 4th – 5th May 2010 The Inaugural Ethical Corporation Awards
Novotel West Hotel, London, Evening of 4th May 2010
The Awards will be held at the Responsible Summit -
on the evening of the first day
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