David Vogel

The Market for Virtue (eBook, PDF)

The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

The principles and practices of corporate social responsibility (CSR) date back more than a century, but the current wave of interest in this topic is unprecedented. This heightened attention is global and is evidenced on every conceivable measure. It is reflected in the growth of social and ethical investment funds, the dramatic increase in voluntary codes of conduct for companies and industries, and the number of companies that issue reports on their social and environmental practices and policies. Similarly, the mobilization of nongovernmental organizations to challenge a wide range of corporate environmental and human rights practices, the frequency of consumer boycotts and protests, and the number of organizations and institutions established to monitor, measure, and report on corporate social and environmental performance all demonstrate deep grassroots interest. In this book, David Vogel provides the first comprehensive, in-depth review of the contemporary CSR movement in both the United States and Europe. He presents a careful and balanced appraisal of the movement's accomplishments and limitations, including a critical evaluation of the business case for CSR. While acknowledging the movement's achievements, most notably in improving some labor, human rights, and environmental conditions in developing countries, he also demonstrates that CSR's potential to bring about a significant change in corporate behavior is exaggerated. The Market for Virtue explores to what extent future improvements in corporate conduct can occur without more extensive or effective government regulation¿in the United States, Europe, the Far East, and in the developing countries. In other words, what is the long-term potential of business self-regulation? Vogel concludes that the amount of improvement that can be expected is far more modest than much contemporary writing on corporate responsibility has claimed. There is a market for virtue, but it is limited by the substantial costs of more responsible business behavior.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 222
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. Mai 2006
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780815797739
• Artikelnr.: 47874747

Autorenporträt

Shortly before his fifth birthday, David Vogel announced he wanted violin lessons. When his father insisted violins were too expensive, David went knocking on doors and came home with the loan of a half-size violin. Growing up, it was assumed he would become an artist of some sort while his older brother would be a scientist. David was not the better student of the two. When he graduated from high school, the principal called his parents in for a conference and informed them that it would be a waste of David's time and their money to send him to college. But in college, he and his brother switched places. His brother became an actor while David earned a PhD in biophysics (but with a subspecialty in eccentricity). Most of Dr Vogel's writing has been educational, and almost all of it (including an introductory physics textbook) has been humorous. (His research papers on neural network models of higher cognitive processes are not at all amusing, but at least he almost failed his thesis defense when the conservative academic from a country with a certain national stereotype took issue with his amusing style - not appropriate in scientific writing). Facing retirement, Dr Vogel has taken the opportunity to begin writing fiction. (Well, the physics problems about his Chrysler powered Smart Car were already fiction.) Day of the Dragonfly is the first novel he has let out of his hands, and it is the first that is not humorous. "It was an unexpected book that came chasing after me while I was sitting with my wife on a long, hot, tropical day in Brazil. It didn't have a single joke in it, but it insisted on being written. It seemed to write itself. Unfortunately, it wouldn't stop writing itself, and when it went past three hundred thousand words, it had to be hacked back like an acre of kudzu." David Vogel presently resides in Hull, Georgia. He's easy to find. Hull is just one vowel from Hell. The serous tone and formal style of the new book have not stopped him from doing stand-up comedy.