The John A. Ryan Institute at the University of St. Thomas has been organizing a series of international conferences on Catholic Social Thought and Management Education. The latest was on the topic “The Good Company: Catholic Social Thought and Corporate Social Responsibility in Dialogue.” You can access a number of the papers through this site.

These conferences are usually a mixed bag, so investigate at your own risk. But there are always a few outstanding presentations and this edition is no exception. Albino Barrera offers a fine, concise treatment of the application of Catholic social teaching to the issue of outsourcing. My only question is whether the phrase “race to the bottom” is an accurate description of what happens in some cases. But I can agree with Barrera’s conclusion, which includes a caveat: “A race to the bottom, if true, is not permissible in CST’s vision of a properly functioning economy” (emphasis added).”