About CEI

Corporate Ethics International is dedicated to the belief that corporations should exist to serve the broad society, not a privileged few. This is why our founding fathers, who had great distrust of large corporations like the East India Tea Company and Hudson Bay Company, endorsed the idea of temporarily chartering companies to serve the public good, then de-chartering them when their work was complete. Unfortunately, whenever a few wealthy and powerful individuals come together for purposes of increasing their wealth and power, they threaten the health and proper function of a true democracy. This is exactly what happened in the two centuries since our inception.

Corporations have gained immense rights that were never intended for them and in the process they have used the resultant wealth to exert influence over who we elect and how they govern. We are no longer truly a democracy as much as we are a corporatocracy, or in the classic terminology, a plutocracy. This is why our mission is to bring corporations back in service to and under the control of the citizenry. We believe that a strong corporate campaign NGO community is vital to this mission, and this is why we have positioned ourselves at the center of this movement.

Our projects purposefully complement each other to feed a larger movement. The Strategic Corporate Initiative is intended to help chart a course for the next 20 years so that we did not lose site of the core changes that needed to happen to bring corporations back under control. The Business Ethics Network is intended to build the capacity of corporate campaign organizations by providing constant education, networking and collaborative opportunities, assistance with staff training and development, and fund raising. And campaigns like the Big Box Campaign and the Tar Sand Oil Campaign are specifically aimed at core industries whose transformation could completely transform the way business does business. Walmart, for example, has over 100,000 suppliers who will adopt whatever environmental and human rights standards Walmart dictates. When we influence Walmart, we change the marketplace.

Corporate Ethics International’s mission is to bring corporations back in service to and under the control of the citizenry.