Reputation is more important than ever to sales, shareholder value and attracting employees. And corporate responsibility is an increasingly vital element of reputation. But this does not mean that we can depend on the enlightened self-interest of corporate management and boards of directors to ensure that human rights and the environment are safeguarded.
It is for this reason that community groups that concentrate their efforts on consumer boycotts, shareholder activism and partnerships with business will often only be able to achieve superficial reforms rather than fundamental change. Real long-term change will involve the cultivation of grassroots power to oppose the muscle of companies whose fundamental products or ways of doing business need to be changed.