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For years now we have summed up the main events of the past year in our end-of-the-year post . Before we are too far into the New Year we thought we should also ratchet up the game a little by sharing our two cents on what the future might hold in store for the world of CSR. In doing so we are partly inspired, partly informed by other players in the CSR world, such as ethical corporation magazine, BSR or just means , albeit our outlook is neither as gloomy nor as rosy as some of our colleague’s. Here is what we think business should watch out for in 2013 when it comes to CSR: Trend 1: Governments are back! One of the basic tenets of the CSR movement in business has been it being voluntary and meeting social expectations above and beyond the law. Well, that sounded good and no doubt many companies have done well in this regard. But after four years of ongoing (and new) financial crises all over the world and some of the more recent scandals it is also fair to say that business has enjo...

Do those teeth need sharpening? Georg Kell, Executive Director of the UN Global Compact.  The emergence of multi-stakeholder initiatives and voluntary corporate accountability programs for business have become some of the most interesting aspects of the CSR debate over the past decade or so. The largest of these in terms of company participation is the UN Global Compact , which now has some 10,000 participants, including over 7,000 businesses in 145 countries. By any account, that's a huge number. It's also a huge experiment given that there's never been anything quite like it before or since. A few years ago we were the official bloggers of the Global Compact's 10 year anniversary, "Leaders Summit" which took place in New York in 2010. At that time we made various comments on the successes, failures and future challenges of the compact. As geeky academics, we are now eagerly awaiting the publication of the special issue of the journal Business & Society (...