I was lucky enough to attend the Business Charity Awards, organised by Third Sector, on Monday night at the Grosvenor House Hotel where the BBC news reader Huw Edwards amused us with gentle digs at the England rugby team. I was sat next to a very interesting woman who works in the field of corporate responsibility.
Like most journalists who have worked in hard news, I wear a cloak of cynicism which I don like a suit of armour to protect me from the daily diet of human misfortune which I report.
Organisations do bad things to people. People do bad things to each other. The state does bad things (on occasion) to everyone. If I came to work with a boundless optimism, bordering on naivety, about the human condition, I would go home in the evening a very disappointed man.
So it was from this position that I questioned my fellow guest about the nature of corporate responsibility departments in business.
Surely, I asked, these teams exist purely to protect the company’s bottom line?
Not so, my guest replied. She said she had dealt with senior figures from a range of companies and their intentions were sincere.
She insisted they really do care about using their business as a force for good.
That’s possibly true, I argued, but when the veil is ripped away, the only corporate responsibility is to protect the corporate in question from falling profits.
If it is true that businesses in the social media age must be careful of the wildfire of public anger that can follow in the wake of a Twitter storm over sharp practice, it makes perfect sense to invest in corporate responsibility as a form of long-term damage limitation.
When the proverbial hits the fan at some point in the future, they can point to their good work as an example of how they really do care about the community.
Looking round the room of 400 people, roughly split between businesses and charities, I wondered how many others took the view that CSR is a thinly-veiled attempt to make capitalism palatable again in an age of austerity.