What is CSR? Free download of introduction to CSR now available

[This post has now been updated with the new edition of our textbook and a new free download. Go to the post "Corporate social responsibility in a global context - a new free download"]

We've just posted online our introduction to CSR from our 2008 text co-written with Laura Spence, Corporate Social Responsibility: Readings and Cases in a Global Context. It's available for free download here at  the Social Science Research Network, albeit only in the pre-typeset version.  In the paper we examine the nature and definition of CSR, and its emergence in different national and organizational contexts. It should be a good basic CSR 101 for anyone trying to get their head's around the subject.

Of course, the question of what corporate social responsibility (CSR) is should be pretty straighforward. It is obvious that CSR is about the stuff that companies do to improve society, right? Or at least what they do to make it less worse. Or perhaps its what they tell us they're doing to make things better, but in reality they're not really doing much of because its expensive, uncompetitive, and difficult. Or maybe its what they should be doing, or doing more of, if only they were a little more, well.... responsible.

So 'what is CSR' is a deceptively difficult question to answer. It almost immediately brings up questions of whether firms have particular types of responsibilities, what those repsonsibilities are, how much firms should be doing, for who, and why. In fact it is easier to come up with a list of questions rather than a simple short definition that pleases everyone.

Still, that's no excuse for ducking the question. Our approach in the CSR introduction paper is not to get too caught up in definitions, but to explore what unites the different definitions that are out there and use that to identify the core characteristics of CSR. In all, we identify six of these components, as shown in the figure below. To find out more, just take a read of the paper....

 
This figure is not actually in the chapter, but feel free to use and reproduce under a non-commercial creative commons licence, giving appropriate citation to the original source of the idea.