The First Rule of Corporate Social Responsibility Is Not What You Think. What corporations do to society is far more important than what corporations can do for society. For some, the very notion of corporate social responsibility remains an oxymoron. For example, the push-back that I get in my class in the Global and International Studies program at UCSB is that corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a concept is part of the neo-liberal conspiracy to make everything market-driven, and students view me as the spokesperson. I will say that after giving me a hard time, they ask how they can get a job working for those exact same corporate culprits. Peter Drucker, perhaps more than any other influential thought leader on management science, wrote expansively and passionately on what he termed “The Age of Social Transformation,” which identified the growing potential and creativity of both nonprofit and for-profit private sector organizations.
What does this tell us?
Business Models Beyond Profit - Social Entrepreneurship Lecture. Carne Ross. B Corporation - Home. J. Elkington - Rio+20 was grim but... My first birthday cake (of two) this year appeared – to my surprise – during a gathering of venture capitalists, impact investors and thought-leaders in California's exquisite Sonoma Valley.
The cake was topped with a candle in the shape of a zero, symbolising the Zeronauts – the innovators and entrepreneurs now pushing towards zero carbon, zero waste or zero toxics who are the focus of my new book. It was a welcome, if sadly temporary, distraction from the appalling news coming out of Rio de Janeiro, some 6,600 miles to the south. I have avoided UN summits for decades, having very low expectations of them, and preferring to go to business events held before or in parallel.