Who cares wins: how business can foster development.(Corporate Social Responsibility and International Development)(Book review)

Corporate Social Responsibility & International Development

By Michael Hopkins

[pounds sterling]24.95 Earthspan

ISBN 1-84407-356-4

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A Professor of Corporate and Social Research at the UK's Middlesex University, Michael Hopkins is considered a world authority on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and this new book is set to become a seminal work on the subject. As wide ranging as it is intensely thorough and detailed, this book starts from a central premise; that governments and international bodies have failed to tackle under-development and poverty and it will increasingly fall to multinational corporations, with their huge power and economic strength, to take up the development agenda. That is why Hopkins believes that CSR is "one of, if not the most important issue of our time".

In the first chapter of Corporate Social Responsibility & International Development, Hopkins puts the power of the world's major corporations into a global context. Here he draws upon the research of Fortune magazine, which reported that, as of January 2005, the biggest corporation in terms of revenues was Wal-Mart, worth just short of $300bn and making $10.3bn in pre-tax profits a year. Interestingly, Wal-Mart was the only retail group in the top 10. The others, with the one exception of General Electric, were super-major oil companies and auto-makers.

Hopkins is quick to acknowledge that these facts and figures may mean nothing in isolation, but compare them to those of the World Bank, that lends around $15bn-$20bn a year, and their relevance quickly become apparent. Compared with the wealth …