The rise and rise of CSR

by Michael Hopkins

"An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today. " Evan Esar

What has happened to CSR since I started working on the subject over ten years ago?

My involvement with CSR was stimulated by the feeling that the public agencies with which we had worked – ILO, UNDP, World Bank etc. – had done many wonderful things in the area of development (and better publicised, some well known failures) but their efforts have not been more than a drop in the ocean. After leaving a meeting at UN HQ in New York, I felt that the UN was getting nowhere fast and that, as the new millennium was five years away, it was clear that the next millennium would be handed to the private sector. Not without challenge nor doubt, but the private sector had, and continues to, show a robustness and vibrancy that, unfortunately, our public sector agencies both nationally and internationally have failed to show.

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