Introduction:
The belief of Sir Mark Moody up until the 1960’s was “that if a company ran an efficient operation with sound staff development, employment, did not bribe anyone, and paid taxes in the country were the money was earned” then they were operating responsibly and doing what was expected of them in society. His view has since changed much like the majority of the world, and now incorporates the need for good Corporate Social Responsibility within firms.
Jonker and de Witte (2006) believe the world is very much in a transitional period and because of this there are new unforeseen demands placed on businesses and governments. Because of the new risks (environmental and social) there is a changing relationship between business and society and so the term Corporate Social Responsibility has been created, acting as an umbrella term for many aspects of business operations including human rights, health, renewable energy etc.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) stems from a belief that firms operating in an economy need to give back what they have taken out. That idea could be misinterpreted to be purely concerned with injecting money and capital into the economy, but CSR is much more than that. It encompasses the need for the development of society with emphasis on infrastructure, education, equity and sustainability. Hopkins (2007) highlights the change in definition of the word “development” that occurred in the late 1960’s. It was up until then that development simply meant strong economic growth until Dudley Seers “broke the fetishism of development theory” thereby moving it away from the tradition that firms needed to be built on foundations that would enable rapid exponential growth, wealth and prosperity. Where the belief at the time was ...