Very interested to read about WalMart plowing back equivalent to $2bn of profit into low-paid staff bonuses. This is one retailer that can expect more growth in a recession than in a booming economy. That is indeed what it is experiencing. But the corporate social responsibility angle here creates positive optics for the media-brow-beaten, non-unionized employer.

It is a win-win. The majority of the $2bn bonus will get plowed back again into Walmart for staff purchases at staff discounts. Where else are they going to shop? A good chunk of the change is actually realized in the form of credits for staff discounts. But, at a time when executive bonuses are too hot to handle, and the up-until-recently-affluent are now buying their shoes at Walmart, giving the top dogs the credit would have created an open-season, all-out attack on Walmart by the media and social activist groups.

So what bonuses will they give the top-dogs? The real PR coup would have been if they accompanied the press release with a zero executive bonus disclosure. After all, Walmart is profiting through by other people's misfortunes. We may yet find out that the big chiefs still get the cream.

Not that we should be cynical. $2bn is real money. But as Archie Carroll, author of Managing Corporate Social Responsibility propounds - where social interests and business interests meet is the sweet spot for corporate social responsibility. It serves Walmart to do this and I wish that more companies would have the sense to think outside of their own britches (AIG).

And it gives the Walmart customer a feel-good reason to shop there, when they might otherwise not be feeling so good.