They pretend to be cuddly but, beneath the hype, ethical company policies are often just a 'greenwash'. Beware the corporate smile, warns Lucy Siegle The latest docu-film in the Supersize Me, Farenheit 9/11 vein is The Corporation (thecorporation.tv/uk). It takes a typical US corporation and analyses it, as if it were a person. It turns out that if it were a person, it would be a psychopath.

The film shows that many corporations still violate basic human rights and ruin the environment, despite the fact that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the point at which enterprise meets ethics, was supposed to change all that. Usually credited to Keynesian economist J K Galbraith, CSR is a concept whereby companies realise that their actions affect society and the environment and so adjust them for the better. CSR should then transform business from a profit-obsessed monster riding roughshod over communities into an environmentally responsible entity.

Although around since the Seventies, it's only recently that CSR has become a 'buzz concept', with glossy CSR reports everywhere. Naturally, corporations love to big-up their ethical achievements and CSR reports are full of pictures of CEOs with big hair, looking sincerely and responsibly into the camera.

Occasionally a corporation shows some ethical progress. When allegations first surfaced linking Gap to sweatshops, the multinational was defensive. But in a 2003 social-responsibility report Gap came clean, admitting that many of its factories failed to comply with minimum labour conditions.

But much CSR can be written off as 'greenwash' or a 'PR fig-leaf', tying in with Mark Twain's view that 'the secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake these, you've got it made.'

Certainly Christian Aid (foe.co.uk) annual 'Xpose' spoof awards ceremony celebrates this type of 'confusion between rhetoric and reality' by including an award for the 'best omission from a CSR report'. This year's honour went to BAE Systems, which omitted 'to mention it made weapons that kill people'.

Through the Core coalition, (ja.org/ethics) that teaches kids 'the right way to be successful in our free enterprise system'. Their promotional literature features wannabe CEOs with big hair looking sincerely and responsibly into the camera.