Territories of Social Responsibility: Opening the Research and Policy Agenda

CSR is a fragile concept if conceived only at the organizational level or driven only by leadership will. Many books deal with aspects of social responsibility, but most deal with CSR as this kind of exclusively organizational and voluntary initiative. Some have an international perspective, but very few address the wider policy agenda. The contributors to 'territories of Social Responsibility' - researchers and practitioners from Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia - were all participants in an international workshop co-ordinated by Patricia Ashley as part of her role as Chair in Development and Equity at the International Institute of Social Studies. They now form an international policy network contributing to studies on the concept of a multi-actor, multilevel and territorial approach to social responsibility and governance, oriented towards global development and equity goals. This relies on a quite different conceptual framework from the more usual, organizationally-focused one for CSR. This book introduces and explains that framework and promotes a research and policy agenda relating to it. A new model sees CSR as embedded in institutional and legal frameworks, which are communicated and understood in business-society relations through a vector of communication and knowledge, influencing situated culture and social values in specific times and spaces, and classified into three levels of ethical challenges. All of this can be expressed into the social processes of education, governance, the development of civil society, and policy making. This all amounts to a renovation of the existing perspectives on the concept of social responsibility found in most published work. Structured into three main parts framed by the editors' introductory and concluding observations, this ground breaking book integrates conceptual and empirical contributions and opens a research and policy agenda for the future. It will appeal to academics, higher level students, policy makers, and to leaders of and advisors to organizations affected by social responsibility issues.