What Is the Social Responsibility of Corporate Management?

What is the social responsibility of corporate management?

Lucio Provenzani

1. Introduction

A relevant amount of literature regarding social responsibility of corporate management,

mainly articles and academic publications, has been produced in the last decades. Depending on

the source, however, different understandings, approaches, and interpretations stand out clearly.

The web is also rich of material that, while at a first impression may seem “marketing” oriented,

is often directly related to the widely disputed concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Within this considerable mass of data arises, first of all, the lack of an agreed basic

definition of what CSR means. Some of the numerous characterizations collected among several

sources are the following:

- “Corporate Social Responsibility is about how companies manage the business processes

to produce an overall positive impact on society”1;

- “Corporate Social Responsibility is about helping to meet people’s needs”2;

- Corporate Social Responsibility is “Operating a business in a manner that meets or

exceeds the ethical, legal, commercial and public expectations that society has of

business”3;

1 Mallen Baker, http://www.mallenbaker.net, 2004

2 Richard Holme and Phil Watts. Making Good Business Sense, 2000

3 Business for Social Responsibility, https://www.bsr.org

Provenzani 2

- Corporate Social Responsibility is “The responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on

society”4 ;

- “Corporate Social Responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave

ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of

the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large”5;

The last of these definitions, established in 1998 on behalf of the World Business Council

for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), tries capturing several regional perspectives6 that

emerged during its development:

- “CSR is about taking...