CSR- Benefits and Costs

Many thanks to Alex Grout who pointed us to the following article which discusses the benefits and costs of CSR. From The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/node/3555212

Perhaps this article could be summed up in the following way (using a quote from the article itself:

"The human face that CSR applies to capitalism goes on each morning, gets increasingly smeared by day and washes off at night."

Essentially, this article argues that capitalism does not need CSR reporting because capitalism, at its heart, will help society. CSR approaches business activity with the premise that capitalism is bad. Therefore it does not understand capitalism and the way business operate. At worst, it may distract those people who are interested from the things which are really important to consider as far as business ethics.

This article, given its political leanings, will most likely be a source of information about the costs of CSR for businesses (this would relate to bullet point 1).