This piece is one of my most-read blasts from the past. Its content remains vividly contemporary. Enjoy.

Richard Edelman’s Voodoo Academia replies to Professor Aneel Karnani of the University of Michigan’s Business School’s The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility. But who’s voodooing whom? Read on ›

We PRs cannot avoid philosophical matters because, as Martin Sandbu says in his new book Just Business – Arguments in Business Ethics, decisions made by business have consequences for other people. Read on ›

Public relations professionals don’t really do philosophy: we’re in the people business, and sound-bites suit us better than Immanuel Kant’s Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785). As for our clients, well, we’re bound to note their lust for the latest guru-speak getting lift-off from an airport bookshop. Read on ›

What happened to Mark Hurd at HP was the stuff of Hollywood. Michael Moore or Oliver Stone to the fore? Read on ›

‘Do No Evil’ Google has, rightly, returned to China. However, Google was also right when it withdrew because its reputation and survival were at stake. Read on ›

Prudential CEO Tidjane Thiam has just learnt the hard way that he is accountable first and foremost to his shareholders. His climb down over the £24.6 billion proposed bid for AIA now looks set to cost his company £450 million and might yet cost him his job. We care partly because the Pru has for decades been the watchword of, well, prudence. Read on ›

Note: This piece needs to be treated with care. I was the victim of a sophisticated hoax. I apologize to anybody who was mislead. But I’m leaving the post here as a spoof of a spoof. It shows how even if the anti-Shell campaigning trickesters got their way, it would not address the problems in Nigeria in a sensible or realistic manner but would actually make things worse.

Yesterday “Shell” (go to hoax press release) said it was going to clean up the Niger Delta, compensate local communities for past injuries, and institute a local stakeholders’ program that will help lift the region out of poverty. That sounds like good news. But what if the real victim is the truth? Read on ›

Here’s the second in my trilogy on the Stockholm Accords. This one deals with the Accords themselves, following part 1’s examination of their definition of terms. Read on ›

This is for everyone interested in the Stockholm Accords and the debate about the future of PR. This is a good moment to talk sensibly and creatively. But I fear a herd instinct is taking us in the wrong direction. (It’s a herd instinct that’s also over-intellectualised, if you’ll forgive the contradiction in terms.) Read on ›

Here’s a PR manifesto offering a post-credit crunch reality check that sticks up for maintaining the primacy of shareholder value in business. Read on ›