Behind the numbers: responsible behaviour?

Corporate social responsibility has come a long way in the 25 years since Milton Friedman labelled it a 'fundamentally subversive doctrine'

We simply expect companies to stop bribing overseas officials, to not use children to stitch together footballs and to clean up their oil spills. But CSR is at a crossroads. And, perhaps for the first time since it began its ascendancy more than a quarter of a century ago, its foundations look a little shaky.

There's little doubt that companies are getting better at transparency and are being more forthcoming about CSR.

Research from communications agency BlackSun, for instance, will show in the next month or two that most FTSE100 companies are already taking the enhanced business review requirements into account - a year before they have to do so.

But does that mean that all's well on the CSR front, then? Not at all.

It's a step in the right direction but I get the sense that those and other companies are only answering the easy CSR questions. Unfortunately, there are only difficult ones to come.

Take Boots, for example - the high street store, that is, not the footwear previously assembled in exploitative conditions. On its CSR website it says it has an 'enormously valuable role to play in promoting the health of our nation', and believes in treating customers 'fairly'.

Yet the retailer has written to suppliers to extend its payment terms to 75 days from the end of an invoice and introduce a settlement charge of 2.5%. 'Call that CSR?' thundered bloggers. And it's hard not to agree when cash flow is the number one killer of small businesses.

Then there's tax. At the heart of Tesco's libel action against The Guardian is the notion that to be accused of excessive tax avoidance is to be socially irresponsible. And given Tesco quotes at least one customer in its writ who agrees, the man on the street may well think so too.

Meanwhile the green debate is set to move from the nebulous to the urgent (for carbon-related cost reasons if not environmental damage reasons). It's easy to imagine a time when the only responsible course of action for many businesses will be carbon neutrality. Anything less would be very un-CSR.

With these and other pressures 2008 might just be the year CSR gets properly defined once and for all. It needs to be.

Damian Wild is editor in chief of Accountancy Age and blogs at accountancymatters.accountancyage.com