There are so many competing definitions of corporate social responsibility (CSR). We need to define what we are talking about in The Missing Link.

My next post will explore the crowded field of CSR definitions and attempt to narrow down that field. To get the most out of that post, however, I recommend reading some of the following materials in advance, asking yourselves the questions set out below.

One of the main documents for discussion comes from The Economist.

Back in January 2005 The Economist created a stir in the business world by publishing a 14 page supplement entitled “The Good Company – A survey of corporate social responsibility”. For my purposes it constitutes a comprehensive and articulate statement of the case against CSR - or at least CSR as The Economist defines it.

The supplement itself can be found in full here.

The second key reading text is a recent scholarly article:

Dahlsrud, Alexander. 2007. “How Corporate Social Responsibility is Defined: an Analysis of 37 Definitions.” Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management. Vol. 15 Issue 1, Pages 1 - 13.

The third text is a blog post by Chris MacDonald, who writes The Business Ethics Blog:

MacDonald, Chris. “Down With CSR! Up With Business Ethics!” The Business Ethics Blog. February 14, 2009.

There are plenty of other articles out there setting out definitions of CSR, contesting others, or simply talking about CSR in a way that assumes a particular definition, even then promising to take CSR “to the next level”.

The Economist survey itself acknowledges its own debt to:

Henderson, David. 2001. “Misguided Virtue: False Notions of Corporate Social Responsibility.” Institute of Economic Affairs.

Reading questions

Please consider the following as you read through the texts.

1/ How does The Economist appear to define CSR?
2/ Does The Economist’s two-by-two matrix in “The union of concerned executives” appear to encompass all the activities and approaches to business that you understand by the idea of CSR?
3/ How does The Economist view business ethics and its relevance to CSR? How does Chris MacDonald view this relationship?
4/ Dahlsrud includes “ethical” within his “voluntariness” dimension of CSR definitions. Do you agree with that inclusion?