Norman Lear's Not Laughing

Yet, "it really did add value," says Bob Dunn, 57, president and CEO of Business for Social Responsibility. A decade ago, Dunn says, "people thought that corporate social responsibility was something attached mostly to small businesses led by owner-founders, and linked to political or social activism. The Trust came along and said this is an issue that concerns every company."

Lear himself has never claimed that the Trust provoked dramatic change -- just as Archie Bunker couldn't force Americans in the 1970s to think differently about racism overnight. But in the end, that may have been why the Trust couldn't survive: It never went for the knockout blow. In its soft-pedal humility, the Trust became, well, bland. Still, Lear hopes that businesspeople were affected in ways that might, years from now, foster change: "My grandfather used to tell me, 'Norman, if you throw a pebble into a pond, physicists will tell you that the lake rises. You'll never see that. You'll just see a ripple.' "