Original title: A literature review of the history and evolution of corporate social responsibility
Corporate social responsibility, or CSR, means the responsibilities people expect companies to have toward society. This paper reviews past academic ideas alongside international policies and major social and political events. It finds that CSR grew from a focus on profit to a wider set of responsibilities, and then toward the idea that companies should create value shared with society. The review also suggests CSR will remain part of business discussions in the short term.
Imagine a family deciding what a local shop owes the neighborhood. At first, they judge it mainly by whether it earns money; later, they also expect it to act responsibly and benefit the people around it. In this paper, the changing expectations of the neighborhood stand for changing social expectations, while the shop’s changing duties stand for how the meaning of corporate responsibility evolved.
Companies face changing expectations about how they affect society, not just how much money they make. This review traces how those expectations shaped the meaning of corporate responsibility and points to shared value as a possible focus for future research and practice.
The abstract describes a historical literature review and a plausible future for CSR, but it does not report an empirical test of whether shared-value approaches work in practice. It also does not specify the review’s selection criteria or establish how CSR will develop beyond the short term.
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A literature review of the history and evolution of corporate social responsibility — Mauricio Latapí, Lára Jóhannsdóttir, Brynhildur Davíðsdóttir — International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility — doi:10.1186/s40991-018-0039-y
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.