Corporate Social Responsibility and Management in a Glocal Context

Introduction

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – both as a concept and an adopted practice – is ubiquitous and in widespread use by international, national and local corporations, and supporters, skeptics, and critics alike. It is also a growing area of concern and practice for businesses, in particular in relation to challenges such as poverty, sustainable development goals, climate change, environmental issues, and a range of diverse ethical issues. More recently the issue of corporate social irresponsibility has emerged and will be tackled here briefly in the next section (Section 1) and in the section on solutions and recommendations (section 4).

This chapter reviews the literature and the main problems related to corporate social responsibility, to identify the most important current challenges and their relevance to management and business information systems. Sustainability and social responsibility tools - such as the Global Compact, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), SA8000 standards and ISO 26000 standards - have drawn our attention.

In the first section, we review the literature on the CSR concept and its context. In the second section, the focus is on the discussion of CSR issues. In the third section, the discussion focuses on the problem of communication, internal management of knowledge, stakeholder participation and management of information and knowledge systems. Finally, the last section emphasizes the main challenge for the near future.