On October 11, 2002, the Social Enterprise Club held its first annual conference. One of the panels addressed the issue of Corporate Responsibility. Participants included a good mixture from corporations and institutions with interest or practice in corporate responsibility. Part of the panel addressed Corporate Philanthropy. Nancy Morgan of Vivendi Universal and Pamela Haas of IBM discussed how a corporation can establish a good corporate citizenship program. Arpana Agarwal of PWC and Mike Blowfield of Development Alternatives discussed emerging issues in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Claire Prassier of Aspen Institute facilitated the discussion. Claire also introduced the role of business schools and Aspen Institute’s work to contribute to the evolution of CSR. Perhaps for MBA students like us, one of the most important take-aways from the panel was in Nancy’s words; "The charity work does not compensate for poor financial performance." Talking from her first hand experience at Vivendi Universal, Nancy, an alum of Columbia Business School, opened up her speech by saying that, "I did not know if I would have a job when I agreed to come to this panel, but I thought, either way, I would have something to say." Although contributions are lowered, Vivendi decided to keep its Community Affairs department in place. This shows us, she added "…even in hard times community involvement of companies is one of the priorities." Pamela Haas, responsible for IBM’s Community Affairs, spoke about each corporation’s need to have a niche in community affairs, very similar to their business model itself. She gave examples from IBM, and said that while IBM has multiple community affairs initiatives and programs its most successful ones usually involve around technology. Since IBM’s main competitive strength lies in technology, she added that her favorite programs were ones in which employees of IBM helped children of low-income families learn the use of technology or advised public schools on information systems. She advised students interested in Community Affairs careers, to form allies in the company so that ownership of the programs expands. Claire Prassier, of Aspen Institute, highlighted recent developments in the business education. She said CSR and Ethics are increasingly part of business school rankings. Aspen Institute has recently launched a website where they aim to help support universities in teaching CSR related issues. Caseplace.org is a web site where case studies in CSR are presented. When asked about what comprises corporate irresponsibility, Mike Blowfield said, "There are many definitions for Corporate Responsibility and irresponsibility. But it’s like the famous sentence: ‘I don’t know how to describe it. But I know when I see it.’" Development Alternatives advises corporations on emerging issues of CSR like environmental and social impact management, community partnerships and Human Rights. Particularly for companies involved in business activities in developing countries, where legal frameworks are far from being sufficient, the challenge to comply with widely accepted social and environmental standards is higher. Arpana Agarwal, an alum of SIPA, introduced PriceWaterhouseCooper’s CSR practice, in which consultants advise companies on corporate governance, socially responsible investments, environmental and legal compliance, labor rights and human rights. She said that their European practice is much more established than the US one. Although, in light of recent events the business is picking up. Both Arpana and Mike have agreed that there is a strong business case for CSR. With technological improvement and increased consciousness among the citizens of the developed world, where the majority of consumers and investors resides, companies that neglect the need for social and environmental impact management will face enormous risks. They further argued that the leading companies will reap the most benefits, whereas laggards, who will sooner or later will need to catch-up with their peers, will not have the competitive advantage that CSR can offer. One critical argument (for business) for CSR, is that companies that have established systems in place for environmental and social impact management demonstrate overall strength in corporate governance and financial management.