by Betsy Reed

About the author: Betsy Reed is the coeditor of Real World International and a former coeditor of Dollars and Sense, a bimonthly magazine concerning economic issues.

Late in the fall of 1997, some 600 business leaders—including CEOs, marketing directors, and investors in some of the nation’s largest corporations— gathered at the Sheraton Grande, a giant nonunion conference center in downtown L.A., for the fifth annual meeting of an organization called Business for Social Responsibility. BSR started out as a small network of profit-minded liberals in the Ben-and-Jerry’s mold, eager to prove that you can save the planet, help the poor, and make money at the same time. But in the last few years the organization has welcomed hundreds of mainstream companies into its ranks, such...