Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Abbas Beydoun: Of course there are many social obstacles in culture and education which minimize the importance of women in the society. Societies are still dominated by men and feminism is a dream that we are all looking forward to achieving, but we can not because there are new differences that are continuously created and feminism looks easy to achieve but practically it is difficult to get. We should struggle for better situation of the women, more respect for them and for a culture of equality. It is not bad thing that there are no women in the power, because I personally believe it is kind of respect for women and women generally do not like to be in power on the contrary to men. Women can live depending on the others which is a great advantage that we should keep.

by Abbas Beydoun

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Alvaro Restrepo: It is not only possible, but it is an obligation and a necessity. There is actually a social corporative responsability in my country which is “in fashion”. But it cannot only be a sort of fashion. This is the only possibity that we have to survive. The companies that are led by material wealth have to share wealth with the society. Once again I have the opinion that it is not a subject of generosity or good intentions but a subject that has to do with the only possibility that we have to survive in this world. Either we accept that the good of everybody is the unique condition for the growing of humanity or humanity will be lost.

by Alvaro Restrepo

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Ana Lucy Bengochea:

by Ana Lucy Bengochea

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Andries Botha: It is possible. Not much of it is around. Everyday, it does exist. The assumption being, of course, that the individuals who profit feel that there is a limit to that which they need and that which is extra, they can redistribute. So first of all, before it becomes a legislative phenomenon, it needs to be an individually-realized necessity. An individual who makes money needs to feel that their needs are sufficiently met and that the excess needs to be redistributed in some sort of way. But I guess, we as people, as a civilization [value rise] this excess in such [inaudible] problematic, difficult to understand the social necessity of sharing our excess. I think government seemed to institute making its own way by one’s excess. They need to institute a mechanism whereby one’s profit can be reintegrated into the society. However, that will never happen until individuals realize that they profit, their excess needs to be distributed and not hoarded.

by Andries Botha

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Adam, it’s not just a source of responsibility. It is totally a source of responsibility. The corporate responsibility people don’t understand and thus the corporations are making money, money, money, money. And do they distribute that money? I don’t think so. Look at the banks, Adam. They charge you, in North America, they charge for every transaction you do. They charge you money. And they have profit. I live in Canada and those five big banks in Canada, they have billions of dollars in profits they make based on the charges they do for every transaction 40 million people do. And look at United States. Look at Germany. Look at all the places in the world, each bank makes money. Not just the banks, then comes the corporations. It was asked earlier today about brand names. They make money upon money. Do they distribute their wealth to those who bought their products? No they don’t. It is really funny. The other day, in a big corporation that you were talking about how important it is for having social responsibility. One of the corporations in Canada was proudly announcing, “We have a foundation.” Did you know that they have more than many billions of dollars of profit? Their foundation was 10 million dollars. Is that social responsibility? They claim it to be. But 10 million dollars versus billions of dollars in profit. At least they began. Will they succeed in really meeting that social responsibility? I pray to the Great One. But again, Adam, we need your help for that.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Anthony Arnove: This is actually a great question because there is - I think a lot of people are right now talking about corporate responsibility, talking about socially conscious corporations. And really, I think that this is a very problematic notion because corporations exist for a reason under capitalism, which is to make profit. And at the end of the day, that is what corporations will do. And that goal, that imperative of making profit is completely at odds with social responsibility, it’s completely at odds with questions of concern having to do with the environment, treatment of workers, social concerns that are raised by those who talk about corporate responsibility, social responsibility of corporations. Ultimately, corporations, if they believe that they might be socially responsible, will find themselves at an economic disadvantage from corporations that are operating without any such concerns. And in that kind of condition of competition that exists under capitalism, those corporations will be able to drive out a competition, which has concerns that will raise the cost of production, that will raise the cost of doing business for those corporations. So, whatever the intentions of individuals in those corporations, the Directors, the CEOs, or so on, they will find that their investors, their Board Advisors or their competition will pressure them economically, and thus equilibrium on the system will then return to an equilibrium, which is based on exploitation or based on denial of any social concerns.

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Anuradha Koirala: If you have connection towards the social issues, yes. If you have connection towards the social issues, yes. There is responsibility of corporate -- there is corporate responsibility that is responsible for causes. If you have social [conscience] – social issue[conscience], then there is possibility of corporate responsibility.

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Anuradha Mittal: I think as long as corporate social responsibility is voluntary, are dependent on the corporations to adopt the standards, it is not possible. Unfortunately, it has turned into a public relations exercise where we see corporations like Monsanto talk about through biotechnology feeding the world, it is nothing else but PR campaigns; it is nothing else but poor washing. Or they talk about their technology will result in less use of pesticides; that’s green washing. And we saw from the Rio Summit that corporations did emerge as these partners, these public-private partnerships that emerged from the Rio Summit, [inaudible] Summit and suddenly these corporations instead of polluters became partners. Now as long as we have corporate social responsibility as a pure tool where they are underneath obligation to fulfill the codes that they sign up to, we will see a world where corporations are using it for their fancy advertising. Chevron and Shell can have their participants to talk about environmental protection with these fancy slogans, “Do people care?” But the truth is we need to ask, “Do people kill?” And, yes, these corporations are still killing. So, as long as it is voluntary, as long as corporations are not regulated, as long as they are not tied, their hands are not tied behind their back in terms of respecting human rights and respecting workers rights and respecting our environmental codes, we will see a world where basically corporate social responsibility will be nothing else but basically a pure exercise whereby the corporations can get away with basically using it to promote their interests but without being accountable to anyone. Also, along with these codes, you need not just independent monitoring by civil society, but we also need governments implementing these codes of conduct, that these governments instead of being in the pockets of corporations are actually ensuring that these corporations are living up to the ideals that they have signed up to. And if we do not do that, whether it is Global Compact between the UN and companies such as Shell, we will not really see reality change on the ground. And last thing I would say is for corporate social responsibility, it is really important that environmental regulations go hand in hand with principles of equity. You cannot separate environmental ecology and equity. And we have to have codes of conduct for corporations that basically apply on all these areas of ecological [audio ends]

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Ashok Gangadean: Not only is it possible, it must happen. And I think it is happening into this global world as culture shifts from an older form of ego-based separate culture where the bottom line for corporate life and evil capitalism has been the bottom line of the maximum profit and money for the corporate system. But now it’s being seen as we shift to a more whole systems approach of seeing our interconnectivity with each other, and with different economies and with different peoples and cultures and with nature. We’re shifting to a more integral form of corporate life and this new evolution and revolution in corporate responsibility. There are clearly new corporate leaders that have begun to develop a sense of corporate business ethics in a global scale and realizing that we must really be sensitive. It makes to all of the different stake holders in our economic life, not just the bottom line of the corporation making profits, but to tend to the welfare of workers, to be sensitive to the relationships with all of our different dimensions that lead to that corporate productivity, the workers and whether they are being exploited. It is now clear that a triple bottom line that is more rich and enriching is better business. So that it pays now. It’s being seen just in terms of entrepreneurial survival. It pays to be good. Goodness pays. And being right is much better business and more profitable even than the other ways, the older ways that only looks at the egocentric, more myopic bottom line of maximizing profits and money.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: Definitely corporate social responsibility is possible, but more than possible it is increasingly becoming a necessity as people are becoming more socially conscious and socially minded. They want to be able to have corporations exercise social responsibility as well. And will ultimately support those corporations and the products that they consume and buy, or not, depending upon whether or not the corporation ultimately will be able to present a positive image, be able to promote the common good of people around the world. So I think that corporations are recognizing this need to behave in socially responsible ways and to let the consumer know that they also have an aspect of the corporate funds which are used to promote poverty alleviation, promote education, promote activities that benefit youth, a variety of ways that corporations are increasingly demonstrating their connectivity to the communities in which their businesses are located and that they cannot divest themselves of having a responsibility to their communities and to their consumers to behave in ethical, responsible ways. Are there corporations who do not yet understand or embrace corporate responsibility? Yes. But I do believe that more and more corporations are beginning to see that the image that they create in the world has a lot to do with how they're able to demonstrate to the public their ability to be able to serve the needs of the members of the community as well.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Benson Venegas: Jacintha, this is a very interesting question, and from my heart I would like to say that this is not necessarily what's happening. What you can notice is that this disbalance the way education is approached in our societies. Where people have more access to better education and other people have less access to education. So for education system to really have children bloom you need four things. The first thing is that we need to prepare our children to work, or to live, in a post-modern society. We need to help them to bring, or create a synergy, between old and new values. The old values of the old world and the values of the new world. Secondly, we need to equip kids and children to really live and develope in a economically context. And this is very important, because economy is going globally, so we need to prepare our children to really - to work in this new dimension of things. There's a third and very important aspect. And it has to do - and I think this is one of the places were we have made a mistake sometimes in schools -that we really need to bring in the classroom all the diversity of learning, the richness of the diversity of learning aspects that is present in the classroom, where kids from different cultures, from different perspective, from different backgrounds, can really enrich, in a more participatory way, the knowledge that they're getting from the system. And fourth, and what is very - least and not important - is that we need to really narrow the gap of the disbalance of education, where some places people have access to better education, and others really have less possibilities for education. We need to narrow that gap to be able to help children to bloom in a broader way. And that education can be very keystone in a process of transforming people lives.

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Beverly Schwartz:

by Beverly Schwartz

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Bill Joy: Corporations are not inherently socially responsible. Corporations can and often are led by well meaning people who are personally very responsible but corporations are in a competitive world, a world that’s increasingly industrializing with economies, newly industrializing economies such as China that have much lower costs. And so a company has to be competitive, it has to survive and people will often sacrifice social responsibility for survival when they’re managing a company. So the challenge for the west is to keep our values while being exposed to this very very strong competition. And I think that this really limits how responsible companies are. We can hold companies responsible by making their image and the things they do to promote their image in the marketplace dependent on the way in which they’re behaving. But I think we have to be realistic and understand that in this kind of competitive system we’ve created the ability to force this kind of responsibility on our companies is limited and depends on us pushing pretty hard for the kinds of behaviors that we want. And it’s a constant job. It doesn’t, it’s not a victory that can ever be won, it’s a battle that always has to be fought.

by Bill Joy

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Bora Cosic: Off course it is social responsibility. I do not know any kind of sociality which enables the responsibility of firms them self there, there are always some kind of ideological or economical catch. In socialism it was always spoken of some general standards in independence of community, in capitalism there are some other standards. However I do not know which method can be established to make the responsibility of corporate true.

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Brian J. Weller:

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

Catherine David: It's undoubtedly possible, but not necessarily desirable insofar as corporate social responsibility is a little bit a refusal or a substitution of the political. I think that what's really missing today is a real, consistent, constituted, polemic, dissentient political space, and that the social society is often the alibi, the first alibi they find not to let any space for the political; I didn't say "the politics", I said "the political". And that, even if it's more than desirable that the social society is more responsible, active, conscient, I think that civil responsibility, civil society can't be a substitute for the political, and that this is a drift which, at the moment, seems quite serious to me in numerous situations.

by Catherine David

Sep 9, 2006 11:15:00 AM cite

China Keitetsi: I think it is possible. I think if every human being, everyone who is over 20 years old, makes in his everyday life, puts an hour or so aside and try to do something to change the world, I think it is possible because we are so many people, but why do we not notice it? And how can things which doesn't speak be difficult to achieve? I think we are the master of everything that doesn't speak. And it depends of course on how much love and passion and care you put into such caring. For me, as a lone person, everything I've tried to do, everything I've tried to organize, not only for me, for my children, for my friends, for my sister's children, I have done. It's about choice. You can choose not only to live for you but also to live for many others. And this will be possible.

by China Keitetsi