ABSTRACT
The 'National Corporate Responsibility Index is an attempt to measure the state of corporate responsibility across 80 countries, covering key factors such as levels of corruption, businesses' adoption of environmental management, and the state of corporate governance. Deciding what constitutes 'corporate responsibility' is as much a cultural and political challenge as it is a technical one. 'Corporate social responsibility' and 'corporate citizenship' are often discussed in terms of issue areas such as child labour or deforestation, or business functions such as marketing or public affairs. By engaging this system in order to change it, these professionals risk imbibing its values as our own and beginning to see their work merely in terms of reports, projects and promotions, and becoming a new breed of 'living dead'. According to Antonio Vives, head of the Inter-American Development Bank’s Corporate Responsibility programme, corporate responsibility in Latin America is 'on the verge of take-off'.
