Response to my critics

Anna Beckers and Ioannis Kampourakis have formulated sophisticated critiques of ‘The Great Shell Game’, and I have learned a great deal from this exchange. Some of their criticism can be answered by clarifying the terms of the debate, which I do briefly below. I wish, however, to maintain the general thrust of my argument, and even to double down. With my title, I make an analogy between CSR and the confidence trick played by street operators who move pennies quickly between plastic cups and ask the assembled crowd to bet on where they end up. This game depends on skill but also on fraud, the operator working with a shill to mislead the audience. I suggest that as academics we must make sure that our sophistication does not place us in the role of the shill—preventing the public from noticing that corporations pocket the pennies.