Speaking of Walmart's new social manifesto, we've had two interesting contributions to thinking about how corporations should view their responsibilities. The Economist ran a special report on the topic last week, advising companies not to try to do it all, but rather "do what comes naturally." Sounds like a cop-out, right? But hear them out:

If it is nothing more than good business practice, is there any point in singling out corporate social responsibility as something distinctive? Strangely, perhaps there is, at least for now. If it helps businesses look outwards more than they otherwise would and to think imaginatively about the risks and opportunities they face, it is probably worth doing. This is why some financial analysts think that looking at the quality of a company's CSR policy may be a useful pointer to the quality of its management more generally.

I had an economics professor in college who insisted that if businesses would just factor real social and environmental costs into their operations, we would solve a lot of problems that seem more complicated than they really are. I think the Economist is not far off the mark there.

A group of business school professors, writing in the The Stanford Social Innovation Review, has a different, though not contradictory, take the future of CSR. Put simply:

What does Tommy Hilfiger owe to Hong Kong, Bermuda, New York, and Mexico – not to mention to the countless malls where its goods are sold? What are Royal Caribbean’s responsibilities to Liberia, which few of its executives could locate on a map?

Although firms have changed drastically with globalization, their understandings of corporate social responsibility have not kept pace. This presents corporations with a paradox: At a time when more stakeholders than ever are calling them to account, firms have but a foggy notion of what, exactly, their obligations are.

The authors propose a mix of contributors, each of whom has a different comparative advantage in getting companies to meet global responsibilities -- from European Union product and environmental standards, to U.S.-mandated governance guidelines, to NGO-derived human rights and labor rules.