José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, British foreign secretary William Hague, US secretary of state Hilary Clinton and most recently American president Barack Obama have all visited Burma in recent months.

Modern chief executives need to be more than business leaders. And their wider responsibilities are something to be supported, not begrudged. At the 2012 Ethical Corporation Responsible Business Summit, I interviewed Paul Walsh, the long-serving chief executive of Diageo.

In the midst of the Euro-zone crisis, it would have been easy to miss the recent publication of the new Communication on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)from the European Commission. Publication had been delayed several times as rival camps battled over the text.

Cranfield’s professor of corporate responsibility gives his personal view on how business schools have developed corporate responsibility programmes, and where their future focus should be. Twenty years ago, as one of the managing directors of Business in the Community, the UK-based, business-led coalition promoting corporate responsibility, I visited the Harvard Business School (HBS), to suggest it should teach corporate responsibility.

Leading companies understand why being a good corporate citizen leads to economic success. The “business case” for corporate responsibility was given new resonance this summer by the News of the World phone hacking scandal and the events that followed.