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'Business ethics' and "corporate social responsibility" are two terms that are often used interchangeably, but at the same time represent somewhat different lenses on business practice. Ethics, of course, is always concerned with norms and values, and is basically about what is right and wrong. CSR on the other hand may be about these things, but doesn't have to be - lots of people take a purely economic or strategic approach to CSR without any real consideration of the normative dimensions. CSR is also, as might be expected, a lot more business-friendly than business ethics. In fact, people often tend to use CSR when they're talking about the good things companies are doing, and business ethics (or a lack of them) when talking about the bad things they do. There are other differences too, but we'll save the definitional niceties for another day. The point is that the term you use is not always just arbitrary. And the two have a very different heritage eve...

Mermaids protesting the BP oil spill. Photo by Johnathaneric .  It's been a big year for corporate responsiblity. A huge oil spill, continued ructions in the financial sector, landmark decisions in the courts, and a new dawn for online companies around human rights issues. It is never easy to pick the most important stories of the year. Some get huge coverage simply because they feature big brand companies. Some hardly even scratch the public consciousness despite having major implications. In other cases, it can be difficult to determine accurately what their long-run significance will be. But here in the Crane and Matten control room, we've put our heads together to come up with what we regards as the top 10 corporate responsibility stories of the year. These are the events that we think will have the most lasting impact on the field. But it was a hard choice - narrowly missing the cut were the 10 year anniversary of the Global Compact, the FIFA World Cup corruption scandal, ...

This is a quote from the German blogosphere today, commenting on the decision of MasterCard, Amazon, PayPal and other companies to withdraw their services from the controversial Wikileaks site. In the last two days the attention on Wikileaks has taken a really funny turn. While most of the brouhaha in the media over the last days has been about the stirs in the political world ensued by the disclosure of the diplomatic cables, the debate has taken a conspicuous turn in the last two days. First, there is the decision of these companies to withdraw their services from Wikileaks. While this points, once more, at the blurring boundaries between business (making profits) and politics (acting as agents of their democratic electorates) it also highlights the increasing relevance of ethical reasoning for corporate decision making. How we would love to have been a fly on the wall in the boardroom of these companies when they were deliberating on how to deal with Wikileaks these days! Now, the c...

It’s been quite a week or so for transparency. The incendiary WikiLeaks release of almost a quarter of a million classified cables from the US diplomatic service has set news media across the world alight with daily revelations that have acutely embarrassed politicians everywhere. Last week also saw the FIFA bribery scandal reach new heights with the screening of the BBC Panorama program alleging corruption, followed by last Thursday’s selection of Russia and Qatar as the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups respectively. Yes, that’s Russia, the country labeled a “virtual mafia state” in one of the WikiLeaks cables. Both cases involve a whole host of ethical issues, but perhaps more than anything they pose critical questions about the appropriate limits of transparency. How much should we know about what goes on behind the scenes in organizations such as the US diplomatic service or a global sporting body such as FIFA? And can too much transparency really be a bad thing? WikiLeaks i...

For a long time Canada – certainly in the rest of the world – had this image of a very progressive, liberal and forward looking country in terms of social and environmental responsibilities of business. This not only applies to business leaders which from an early time on championed these ideas. To mind comes Maurice Strong and his engagement for various UN led environmental initiatives in the 1970s. Or Chuck Hantho who, while CEO of what is now ICI Canada, initiated the ‘ Responsible Care ’ program in Canada which subsequently was adopted by the global association of the chemical industry and is now a standard for the industry in 53 countries globally. Not to forget David McTaggart , the Canadian businessman who became one of the founders and early leaders of Greenpeace. Also notable are wider initiatives such as the Montreal Protocol or, more generally, the courageous stance for human rights and integrity in the world, symbolized by ‘the last man standing in Ruanda’, Canadian Gene...