An insightful article by Tom Sitati has been published in Business Daily Africa, on the role corporate social responsibility should play during the era of the credit crunch, and how corporations will be judged on how they act during this tumultuous period.

Tom references Daniel Litvin,  the author of Empires of Profit: Commerce, Conquest and Social Responsibility, stating that he believes “…it would be a disaster if all the efforts to make big business ethical were discarded just because of the credit crunch — particularly since it was caused by an ethical failure in the first place.”

As excerpted from Business Daily Africa:

Jeremy Warner, The Independent newspaper’s business and city editor, set out a 10 point agenda for preserving our present economic system in the publication’s February 5, edition. A particular point that stood out was the need to actually enforce corporate social responsibility.

Corporate social responsibility is no longer a nice thing to do for businesses and their brands. Once a buzz word big brands were happy to flaunt when convenient, brands will now find themselves being judged by their true everyday ethical standards.

Today’s more informed consumer can read between the lines and may not fall for the beautiful icing that is superficially cladding a cake that may be crawling with maggots.

Today’s consumer finds that the world is in crisis and he is looking to the brands he trusted in the time of plenty to come through when his pockets are tending towards empty.

The free trade movement may have begun as “just another annoying little movement started by malcontents who did not value true progress”.

A few decades down the line and the movement now finds itself influencing big brand, big profit, sometimes big bully businesses that had taken Friedman’s words  a little too literally.