To assume that the business environment has fundamentally changed and that we are entering a new world in which CSR has become critical to the success of all or even most firms is misinformed. The market has many virtues, but reconciling corporate goals and public purposes is unfortunately not among them. Managers should try to act more responsibly. But they should not expect the market to necessarily reward them–or punish their less responsible competitors.
CSR doesn´t pay by David Vogel, professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility (Brookings, 2005)