Companies must take the lead to be moral mentors in the era of Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter

WELL before Nike or Starbucks was even a glimmer in the eye of their founders, a little-known economist sat down at his desk in the 1950s in America to write why he believed companies are obliged to be responsible citizens.

It was 1953 when Howard Rothmann Bowen's Social Responsibilities of the Businessman was published, unique to its time in history. Three years prior, he had been ignominiously forced out of a prized deanship at the University of Illinois. The young academic had tried to integrate social responsibility into the business school's curriculum but had run headlong into an old guard faculty who wrapped Mr Bowen's ambition in the Red Scare tactics of 1950s McCarthyism.

He recovered to take up a successful career as president of three prestigious institutions of higher education - Grinnell College, the University of Iowa and the Claremont Graduate University. And while his academic legacy centred ultimately on spending in higher education, he is long since credited with coining the phrase, corporate social responsibility, or CSR.