Make an oral presentation of the text using the written summary and additional information (details, illustrations and examples).

7. Read the in tide and till in the table given below.

In search of the good company

The debate about the social responsibilities of companies is heating up again

If you believe what they say about themselves, big companies have never been better citizens. In the past decade, " corporate social responsibility" (CSR) has become the norm in the boardrooms of companies in rich countries, and increasingly in developing economies too. Most big firms now pledge to follow policies that define best practice in everything from the diversity of their workforces to human rights and the environment. Criticism of CSR has come mostly from those on the free-market right, who intone Milton Friedman's argument that the only " social responsibility of business is to increase its profits" and fret that business leaders have capitulated to political cor­rectness. But in a new twist to the debate, a powerful critique of CSR has just been published by a leading left-wing thinker.

In his new book, " Supercapitalism", Robert Reich denounces CSR as a dangerous diversion that is undermining democracy, not least in his native America. Mr Reich, an economist who served as labour secretary under Bill Clinton and now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, admits to a Damascene conversion, having for many years " preached that social responsibility and profits converge over the long term". He now believes that companies " cannot be socially responsible, at least not to any significant extent", and that CSR activists are being diverted from the more realistic and important task of getting governments to solve social problems. Debating whether Wal-Mart or Google is good or evil misses the point, he says, which is that governments are responsible for setting rules that ensure that competing, profit-maximising firms do not act against the interests of society.

One after another, Mr Reich trashes the supposed triumphs of CSR. Socially responsible firms are more profitable? Nonsense. Certainly, companies sometimes find ways to cut costs that coincide with what CSR activists want: Wal-Mart adopts cheaper " green" packaging, say, or Starbucks gives part-time employees health insurance, which reduces staff turnover. But " to credit these corporations with being 'socially responsible' is to stretch the term to mean anything a company might do to increase profits if, in doing so, it also happens to have some beneficent impact on the rest of society, " writes Mr Reich.

Finns are using CSR to fool the public into believing that problems are being addressed thereby preventing more meaningful political reform. As for politicians, they enjoy scoring points by publicly shaming companies that misbehave while failing to make real changes to the regulations that make such misbehaviour possible. (Abridged from ••The Economist" September 8" ' - 14^th 2007)