Thomas Maak

Routledge Companion to Corporate Social Responsibility

While the concept and domain of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are not new—its beginnings can be tracked back to the 1960s—its scope, urgency, and relevance have shifted dramatically in recent years. CEO responses show that the majority of business leaders understand that they operate in an environment of contested values and that stakeholders expect companies to do better and more. However, many corporate incentive systems are not in sync with societal norms and expectations. Moreover, "grand challenges" such as climate change and global pandemics and growing interconnectedness shed light on the fault lines of value creation through complex supply chain systems, exposing unacceptable working conditions, modern slavery, and the environmental consequences of highly distributed production at any cost. As a consequence, corporate social responsibility has become a widely accepted common denominator of the role and responsibilities of business in society, ranging from core functions such as health, safety, and environment standards, to governance and recognition of stakeholders, supply chain design, and corporations’ stand on climate change and its responsibility to future generations. This volume assembles state-of-the-art scholarship from leading scholars in the field and enables a "full range view" of CSR, from its roots, normative foundations, and institutional perspectives to matters of stakeholding, the global value chain, social innovation, and future directions. The Routledge Companion to Corporate Social Responsibility represents a prestige reference work providing an overview of the subject area of CSR for academics, researchers, postgraduate students, as well as reflective practitioners.