Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Despite the fact Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the most prominent concepts, it is still difficult to give a commonly accepted definition (Turker, 2009). Indeed, researchers have proposed a plethora of expressions to refer to CSR. Such as corporate citizenship, business ethics, sustainability, etc.
Carroll (1979) is an early pioneer in this area, has recognized four dimensions of CSR and developed the Corporate social Performance Model. As proposed by him, CSR specifically consists of four types of corporate social responsibilities in economics, law, ethics and philanthropy. he also elaborately explained the four responsibilities in a pyramid structure. (Figure 1) Besides, he found that a company has four stakeholders (including society, employees, customers, government) or interest groups.
Figure 1. The pyramid of corporate social responsibility
In addition, there exist many other definitions on CSR given by authoritative international organizations. For instance, as stipulated by ten principles and requirements in “the UN Global Compact”, companies should make efforts and perform internationally acknowledged norms to defend human rights, labor standards, environment and prevent corruption. CSR regulated by OECD “aims to make contributions to the development of economics, society and environment with the goal of sustainability”.
As a result, in combination with mainstream stakeholder theories, CSR demands companies to assume legal responsibilities for shareholders and employees while earning profits, and in the meantime bear responsibilities for consumers, communities and environment. CSR compulsorily requests companies to surpass the traditional philosophy of taking profitability as the sole goal and pay attention to human values as well as contributions to environment, consumers and society in the production process.