“If everyone did CSR then everyone would be better off” I think that this claim is probably true. In any case, today you will hear plenty of good arguments in this favor. The fly in the ointment, so far as trying to persuade business to adopt CSR is concerned, is that so long as it is not the case that everyone does CSR, there is an upfront cost to any business which takes the plunge, with no guarantee that there will be sufficient return on one’s investment. While you do CSR and your competitor’s doing, they reap the benefits of your socially responsible behavior while you get nothing in return apart from the glow of satisfaction at being able to occupy the moral high ground. The problem is familiar one from political theory. For example if everyone agrees that we need to do something about climate change. If we all did something about climate change we would all be better off. But everyone also knows that any country which takes the plunge and launches a unilateral carbon emissions i...