OK – thanks, I enjoyed the conversation. But to be clear I don't represent myself here as part of the 'enterprise CSR' gang whatever you imagine that to be. Actually — the fact that you think that is the position is still more circular logic. Remember the original blog post was critical of the alleged behaviour of a fairly large enterprise. If I was trying to pigeon hole myself as 'enterprise CSR' then I might like you look for 100 reasons why what was alleged to have happened was somehow OK. On the contrary.

All I'm asking and arguing for is that the very standards you uphold in your own business – clearly exemplery – and I mean that sincerely, might be upheld by all businesses every where. Its an entirely reasonable propositon and I will always insist that citizens & consumers (as opposed to enterprise csr gangers ) are entitled to expect it as baseline behaviour.

I’ve appreciated the dialogue – cheers (oh and if you’re ever in need of some cactus gear flick me a line and I’ll do you a 20% discount – just ‘cos I can…)

I don’t want to get into an argument with the Enteprise CSR gang but suffice it to say that in my market there are many players who are strongly branding themselves as ethical – sometimes that’s little more than marketing spin….

On your third point to Marilyn – I agree in personal responsibility to a point but lets face it people are the same the world over and encompass light and shade. It isn’t enough to place all the responsibility at the door of the consumer because as Dennis has said they just may not have the information. Second they may not be able to afford the ethical premium if this has to be paid for at a premium but why is this the agonising choice for the consumer? And this is where I get on my high horse — why should I as a consumer pay extra for the privilege of knowing that workers were not exploited along the way and have that sold to me as some kind of cache, green premium. We no longer accept that we can be sold dangerous goods at a lower price such as lead laced toys or cars that blow up in a collision (Ford Pinto). We have internalised many moral standards already into the market — there is room for more across the board internalisation and not just segmentation. i do grant you that brand leadershoip in this area can lead to normalising of the standards for all but that must happen.

Yes individual consumers and citizens should take more responsibility but governance and institutions matter a lot in how society is guided so that we reach our highest not lowest common standard and purpose. Here I mean regulation and concrete voluntary action of the corporation to transparently set, maintain and demonstrate universal standards of decency & self policing in their operations.

1) I don't consider that I'm being self righteous. We do what we do because we want to. My incredulity is around the naivety of people to what market forces can do
2) With the utmost respect to Dennis – this article does not come from his "independent research" it comes from a newspaper link
3) Rather than people act responsibly and voice these concerns, perhaps people could act responsibly in their consumption. Talk, as they say, is cheap

@James

1) Appreciate your comments re circular arguments – what I'm saying is that we're a very small, semi-marginal company. In order to grow beyond a certain size we'd have to move to sweat shop production. We've decided that we don't want to. So the argument is only marginally circular (more oval perhaps?)
2) We're not narrowly differentiating ourselves based on our ethics per se. Rather we do what we do because we think it's right. It's a personal decision we've made and we don't really push it in our marketing (not too much anyway). I only use the example here because it's a business I know inside out

And this is where I believe @ben has become ensnared in his own circular logic.
On the one hand Ben is proud of his own non exploitative, ethical busines model and on the other hand he is writing off the Amazon situation as inevitable outcome of market determinism. Well which is it? Are we a market determined society or not? And Ben I don’t think narrowly segmenting and differentiating your business model as ‘ethical’ relative to others benefits many or much beyond your own bottom line. This is why I think narrow segmentation on the lines of old school Body Shop or Ben & Jerry’s is not sustainable in the long run although its a great business model and there is a great irony in this — these models are successful only because everyone else’s are not and thats not good enough. We need to scale up decent and sustainable working practices and hold them universal as a baseline for all businesses everywhere.

I for one believe in the market but I’m not a fundamentalist about it and my zeal for markets end where vulnerable people are exploited. We should not submit to it as an inevitable outcome in the UK or anywhere else for that matter.

I applaud Dennis' independent research and his insistence on surfacing these inconvenient truths even when these are at times "close to home".
Yes, it is more shocking to hear that your company or your country has transgressed and in that sense, sphere of influence and demographics do matter.
I, for example, might have more ability to voice my concern to the govenment of the country where I am a citizen or to the judicial bodies that are most accessible to me than in some removed geographic location.

If more folks were to act as responsibly as Dennis, himself an auditor, and to be raising the clarion call more often, we would have more powerful public opinion with which to lobby and to press for the important tool of aspirational codes.

We should be shocked and we should turn that shock into lobby action.

But either way the humour was seen krupo