“People should become aware that the difficulties we are confronting are not just the difficulties caused by bad, greedy guys in an otherwise good system”. The Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek is musing on the economic crisis and the state of capitalism in an extended interview for Al Jazeera. The recent ‘occupy’ protest that started on […]
Can and should companies be in the business of doing good? This long-running debate was graced earlier this year by a new contribution from Michael Porter, one of the world’s leading management gurus, and his sometime sidekick, philanthropy consultant Mark Kramer. In a headline article in the Harvard Business Review they both took a swipe at […]
In the good old days, when he used to write engaging articles about economics, the Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman took on the urgent and pressing issue of how food in England got so bad and why it had suddenly got better. The problem, as he described it, was that the English had industrialised […]
“In thirty years at Shell no one has ever called me an angel or a philanthropist”, joked the oil giant’s head of exploration Malcolm Brinded at a celebration marking the 10th anniversary of the company’s corporate charitable foundation, which he chairs. Yet over the past decade, according to a report launched in London on 14th October, the Shell Foundation has […]
Two recent articles in the Wall Street Journal have taken shots at elements of philanthrocapitalism – the idea, endorsed by many of the most successful capitalists, that capitalism needs to make a more deliberate effort to improve society. Like Dickens’ Mr Scrooge, the writers’ response to the suggestion that firms and business leaders could do […]
Is corporate social responsibility to blame for the oil spill in the Gulf or for the meltdown of the global financial system in late 2008? This accusation has been made by our friend Chrystia Freeland in the Washington Post. While it is easy to understand the contrarian appeal of this claim – how ironic that […]
“Philanthrocapitalism is quite frankly the worst CSR-related idea I’ve come across in a long, long time” and “the idea of philanthrocapitalism must die a quick and painless death,” writes Wayne Visser on his CSR International blog. Oh dear. But, peculiarly, Wayne goes on: “let me confess that I have not read the book”. We should be grateful for the full […]
It was not long ago that nobody interested in making a better world would ever have a good thing to say about WalMart, the giant American retailer, and owner of Asda in the UK. Yet speaker after speaker praised WalMart at the Economist conference on corporate citizenship that Matthew has just moderated in San Francisco. […]
Georgia Levenson Keohane reviewed Philanthrocapitalism for Slate magazine, hailing it as “exceptional” and saying that it “should be required reading in any MBA or public policy program”. Georgia thinks we should have given more attention to the question: “Is the “new” philanthropy really even “new”?” She thinks this is an important issue because, in her opinion, […]
Some people question whether companies can really bring anything unique to solving society’s most difficult problems. An interesting example of how they can make a difference recently came to our attention. This involved Nike, a company that used to be regarded as a pariah by critics of multinationals because of its labour practices in developing […]