Forbes Magazine on Corporate Citizenship

Check out the extensive "special report" section in the latest issue of Forbes. These articles address some great big-picture questions. Here is the list of articles, as the magazine describes them:

• "Can Corporations Save the World?" (Businesses have donated nearly $14 billion to cure society's many ills. But are they funding hope or hype?)
• "The Best Corporate Citizens" (When consumers were asked to name the most socially responsible companies around the world, they had some surprising answers.)
• "When is being good, not good enough?" (Despite their relatively progressive practices, Starbucks and other socially minded firms can’t seem to help being slammed by activists.)
• "New Lessons in Corporate Citizenship" (Courses in corporate social responsibility are becoming a requirement at most B-schools. But can you teach an MBA to care about CSR?
• "Is Corporate Social Responsibility Responsible?" (Not if companies spend shareholder assets on unprofitable causes.
• "Going With the Flow" (Clean water brings health and prosperity to the developing world –while improving Coca-Cola’s image.)
• "Achieving Corporate Citizenship" (How to merge profit, principle and purpose to serve an expanding list of constituencies.)

Quite coincidentally, I sort of know Steve Forbes. He started a student business magazine with a couple of friends when he was at Princeton as an undergraduate. It's called Business Today, and it's still going strong. I was Editor-in-Chief from 1997 to 1999.

Anyway, having met Forbes and worked on his brainchild, I'm very struck by the evolution in thinking about what topics are germane to business leaders and to a business magazine. It's remarkable to think that in just a few years, the dialogue has expanded so much.