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Article

25 Aug 2005

Author:
David Vogel, Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, in Ethical Corporation

The limits of the market for virtue

...the evidence in support of the business case for corporate social responsibility is weak. Certainly many relatively responsible firms have prospered. Such a list would include Starbucks, Nike, BP, Gap, Ikea, Seventh Generation and Johnson & Johnson. But there are at least an equally large number of relatively responsible firms that have recently found themselves in financial difficulty, including Marks & Spencer, Shell, Interface, Levi Strauss, Ben & Jerry’s [part of Unilever], Merck, Hewlett Packard, and the Body Shop...Our challenge is to identify the ways in which both private and public regulation can complement each other to improve corporate performance. [also refers to Sainsbury, Nestlé]