Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

Fifty years ago we did not know what CSR was.We knew what social responsibility was, and what corporate responsibility was, but the combination of the two proved elusive.And, when not elusive, contentious.Now, the contention still rages between the political right and the political left, and across different approaches in both old and new worlds.There is now even a recognized international standard, ISO 26000, for CSR.This handsome, four-volume Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility, with contributors from over 30 countries, bears witness to CSR's coming of age.If there were any residual doubts about the need to look beyond corporate profits for shareholders toward a broader sustainability in the interests of multiple corporate stakeholders, then the last few years have provided the clinching arguments to dismiss those doubts.Banking crises, environmental disasters, and now the debate between austerity and growth all underpin the fact that, in the twenty-first century, business needs a healthy, multifaceted society, as much as society needs a healthy, multifaceted business.Yes, there are many bottom lines: the social, the environmental, even the cultural, in addition to the harder figures of the economic.Over the last 50 years, we have seen the rise and rise of the global corporation.Regulation, necessarily strongly based at the national level, could not for a long time keep up with the lithe way in which corporations construed their business across multiple jurisdictions.It still finds it difficult, and always will, as long as the nation state is seen as the essential unit of sovereignty.Hence, the other debate that rages between the covers of this encyclopedia: How much can it be left up to the good offices of the corporation to be socially responsible, or how much needs to be locally, nationally, and internationally enforced?I congratulate Samuel O.

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