The Conference Board Review is the quarterly magazine of The Conference Board, the world’s preeminent business membership and research organization. Founded in 1976, TCB Review is a magazine of ideas and opinion that raises tough questions about leading-edge issues at the intersection of business and society.

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Openers

It used to be easier to be a good corporate citizen—you funded the local symphony orchestra and fine-art museum, sponsored an apprenticeship program at the high school, sat for interviews with the region’s top newspaper. If you had to pollute, you did it as far from home base as possible. In many tangible ways, you were accountable to the community.

And in return, you got a workforce, infrastructure, recognition, and tax breaks for expansion. Whatever conflicts might arise—and there were always conflicts—there was a measure of loyalty that ran both ways, between the company and the community.

Fewer people live in company towns these days. Multinationals still have headquarters and sprawling corporate campuses, and maybe the top executives still pull into their reserved parking spaces for the weekly C-suite meeting. But their stakeholders now span the globe: Employees staff factories and satellite offices in far-flung regions; customers give credit-card numbers to shopkeepers and websites from anyplace to which UPS delivers; supply chains cross borders with abandon; watchdogs and investors cast gimlet eyes from every corner. And every one of those stakeholders—whether in Western Europe or West Africa or West Baltimore—has a different yardstick, a different set of standards.

So what does it mean to be a good corporate citizen today, when every major company strives to be a citizen of the world?

In “Right, Now,” Jim Krohe sets out to delineate the new meaning of corporate social responsibility. “In a global community,” he asks, “should there be one standard of conduct regarding the environment, working conditions, human rights? Can there be? And who gets to decide?” They’re questions that aren’t easy to answer—Jim’s best efforts notwithstanding—but any executive who cares about her company doing the right thing can’t afford not to consider them.

Elsewhere in this issue, Paula Klein takes on another issue critical to the modern multinational: the challenges that corporate HR faces when trying to manage employees in different time zones. Klein’s article, “It’s 9:05 a.m. Do You Know Where Your Workforce Is?”, focuses on expatriates and how to balance local concerns and mandates from HQ.

Speaking of expats: For much of the last year or so, columnist Ed Heresniak has been reporting from China, where he traveled to teach and found himself learning about the different ways in which young people handle electronics and communication. Ed has been exploring technology—in particular, the intersection of IT and the C-suite—in each issue since 1996, making him this magazine’s longest-serving columnist to date. March/April contains his final “Adventures in Cyberspace” column, freeing him to explore a broader spectrum of topics. You haven’t heard the last from him by a long shot—his distinctive voice will continue to enliven our pages for the foreseeable future.

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