Posts by ICCSR
Finding My ‘CSR Family’
January 21, 2014
I recently co-ran a session for the PhD students in the Business School entitled, ‘how to make the most out of conferences.’ As I prepared the slides for this workshop, I began to reflect upon my conference journey, and my elation at finding an academic home for my research at my most recent conference. I …
In Conversation – Revisiting Corporate Citizenship
January 2, 2014
Why? Isn’t corporate citizenship just another term for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and part and parcel of corporate green-washing? Well, yes and no. Yes, in that many companies and commentators simply use it as an equivalent term for CSR, and often use it as fig-leaf rather than as a core value. No, if we take …
Business Schools and Responsible and Sustainable Business
December 17, 2013
It is a truth universally acknowledged that after some news of business irresponsibility, call it Enron or the 2007 financial crisis, the question is asked, ‘but what did they (the perpetrators) learn at business school?’. As our latest cohorts of students graduate, it remains a fair question. If business schools claim that they prepare students …
Tax is for Life, not just for Christmas?
December 10, 2013
In November 2013 the Institute of Business Ethics announced that in its latest survey of public opinion on corporate responsibility tax was now the number one issue of concern, having succeeded in knocking director remuneration off the top-spot which it had held for six years. This was an extraordinary finding. Six years ago tax and …
Corruption and Bribery – is risk management the answer?
December 9, 2013
The enforcement of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act against Siemens and BAE shows that a failure to address bribery can exact a very high cost on companies ($800 million and $400 million respectively), leaving aside damaged reputations among investors, employees, customers and business partners. Due to the recession in Western markets companies have been …
Are you a whistleblower?
November 12, 2013
I was invited to give an introduction to whistleblowing by the ICCSR before a screening of the film We Steal Secrets. I was keen to talk to people about the experience of whistleblowing from the Public Concern at Work (PCaW) perspective. PCaW is a UK based charity that provides advice to individuals who have witnessed …
Discretion & Institutional Ethics: The Case of the Civil Service
October 22, 2013
“The Opposition aren’t really the opposition. They are only the Government in exile. The Civil Service are the opposition in residence.” Yes Minister CSR research often focuses on the role of corporate managers, as opposed to, say, employees or consumers. What motivates this fixation on managers? The discretion of the corporate managerial …
Corporate Boycotts: no, I mean corporations doing the boycotting…
September 30, 2013
We are all too familiar with boycotts of corporations, principally by NGOs and trade unions. But there has been a recent flush of boycotts of corporations by corporations. Thus corporations appear to be behaving like NGOs by expressing their values – or the values which they think they should express – through the withdrawal of …
Corporations, Taxation and Citizenship
September 2, 2013
Revelations of corporate tax minimisation, even of companies thought to be among the most socially responsible, are little short of grotesque. This is especially so as these corporations benefit from the UK’s transport, energy, communications, health and educational infrastructure which still owes so much to public expenditure. The UK government has vowed to get tough …
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