Tomorrow's Company and the Institute of Chartered Accounting and Wales today ‘soft launch’ Beyond Accounting, a programme of dialogue and discussion looking at best practice in ensuring that the ‘non-financial’ impacts of business are fully taken into account in business decision making.  Over time, we want to widen this this programme to include detailed research and inquiry, building on the excellent paper by Graham Hubbard of Adelaide University which does such a good job in mapping out the agenda for discussion.  In so doing we are exploring in greater depth the conclusions of our inquiry - Tomorrow’s Global Company: challenges and choices - that business leaders and others need to redefine success, because, in a world in which there are increasingly no externalities, performance metrics need to take into account the wider impact of business decisions.

How to stay ethical during a downturn: this was the theme of a talk given by Roger Steare, author of Ethicability, at Cass Business School in London on 26 November.

Over the past weeks, there have been some interesting pieces in the FT on philanthropy such as philanthropic leverage and how the financial crisis might adversely effect giving.

Perhaps an effect of this could be that corporates take a more focussed, targeted approach to charities and be selective in spends.