Crisis of Conscience

"Corporate social responsibility is creating more buzz in the boardroom these days," reports Peter Sinton. "At the International Communications Consultancy Organization's global summit of public relations advisers in San Francisco last week, a debate about corporate social responsibility, also called CSR, was high on the agenda." One way that companies try to prove they are socially responsible is to voluntarily report on their environmental and social practices, but Sinton notes that "these surveys are generally inconsistent, incomplete and unverified," while enforcement of CSR policies is "sketchy and uneven."