Whilst international corporations are taken to court for complicity in humanrights abuses and the trade in child labour and sweatshops is still a scourge throughout the world, this event asks whether the international approach to corporate social responsibility of the last ten years has worked.

The approach of the last decade has focused primarily on voluntary measures taken by companies and enterprises, and finds expression in codes of conduct and non-binding agreements like the UN Global Compact. The CSR movement originally proposed some measures which should be legally binding on corporations, together with voluntary measures, but this was rejected for a voluntarist approach.

Ten years on we can ask: has this worked?