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American free enterprise groups have stepped up their campaign against
corporate social responsibility by holding a ‘counter-event’ to the
biggest annual CSR conference in the US.
Three groups set up the event in the same hotel in Washington DC where more than 1000 CSR proponents were gathered for the annual conference of Business for Social Responsibility. Their meeting was billed as ‘the first organized effort to challenge the left’s longstanding campaign to use corporate America to advance its radical social and political agenda’.
The counter-event was organized by the National & Legal Policy Centre, the Free Enterprise Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which now intend to hold a similar conference annually.
The anti-CSR speakers included Wayne Winegarden, chief economist at the US-based consultancy Sterling International, David Hogberg, executive director of the Capital Research Centre think-tank, and Nick Nichols, a senior lecturer at Johns Hopkins University.
Hogberg, who claimed the event was ‘a very good start for the effort to return the corporation to its original purpose, making a profit’, told delegates that CSR’s ‘rhetoric of responsibility’ masks ‘a leftist agenda of government regulation and wealth redistribution’.
Although the anti-CSR lobby remains small, it has shown signs of increased activity in the past year, particularly in the US. One of its main outlets is the year-old CSRwatch website, which gathers articles and opinions critical of the corporate responsibility agenda (EP6, issue 6, p2).
Three groups set up the event in the same hotel in Washington DC where more than 1000 CSR proponents were gathered for the annual conference of Business for Social Responsibility. Their meeting was billed as ‘the first organized effort to challenge the left’s longstanding campaign to use corporate America to advance its radical social and political agenda’.
The counter-event was organized by the National & Legal Policy Centre, the Free Enterprise Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which now intend to hold a similar conference annually.
The anti-CSR speakers included Wayne Winegarden, chief economist at the US-based consultancy Sterling International, David Hogberg, executive director of the Capital Research Centre think-tank, and Nick Nichols, a senior lecturer at Johns Hopkins University.
Hogberg, who claimed the event was ‘a very good start for the effort to return the corporation to its original purpose, making a profit’, told delegates that CSR’s ‘rhetoric of responsibility’ masks ‘a leftist agenda of government regulation and wealth redistribution’.
Although the anti-CSR lobby remains small, it has shown signs of increased activity in the past year, particularly in the US. One of its main outlets is the year-old CSRwatch website, which gathers articles and opinions critical of the corporate responsibility agenda (EP6, issue 6, p2).
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