It's often entertainingly wrong, but I enjoy reading The Economist's collection of predictions for the year ahead—The World in... 2009, or whatever year it happens to be. I saw its forecasts for this year en route to speak at another of the astounding proliferation of corporate social responsibility and sustainability conferences, this time in southern Brazil. I was pleased when The Economist team spotlighted last year's focus on sustainability, but then I read a column by Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times.

She predicted that 2009 would see the influence of chief financial officers rocketing. While CFOs and "economic value added" will be in the ascendant, the writing will be on the boardroom wall for egalitarianism, empowerment, human resources directors and the war for talent. But worse still awaits "the corporate responsibility supremo", who will be "told to take a gap year indefinitely".

Perhaps oddly, I agree with her—up to a point. I have warned for several years that the CSR agenda would experience the sort of squeeze I have witnessed while working through five recessions.

I have also been busily establishing a form of the Dead Economists' Society, spotlighting the work of Nikolai Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter in all my speeches. Their economic cycles of 50 to 60 years underlay my unease, coupled with a sense that the corporate citizenship movement would find itself in a crucible. The time has come to think in terms of the Phoenix Economy that will rise from the ashes—and how best we can shape that.

Certainly, experience suggests that Kellaway's analysis is dangerously myopic. Previous recessions saw agendas such as safety, health and the environment bruised, and the relevant corporate roles and units squeezed or sidelined. But one unexpected outcome, as the wider challenges continued to evolve and press in, was that the relevant agendas tended to penetrate even further into companies. So my projection is that many CFOs will be forced to engage with climate change and other societal issues that they have so far managed to duck. And they will be expected to help design the new order, not simply to massage the old.

John Elkington's new book, The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, is published by Harvard Business School Press