Company growth and Board attitudes to corporate social responsibility
Coral B. Ingley
International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 2008, vol. 4, issue 1, 17-39
Abstract:
Companies are beginning to recognise the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as presenting a new business model and an opportunity for building innovative forms of competitive advantage. Boards are instrumental in shaping and overseeing such strategies and active engagement around what it means to be a responsible and responsive enterprise can strengthen the Board's potential as a strategic influence on long-term value creation. Yet many companies align with Friedman's contention that adopting and practising CSR is a distraction from their core obligation, which is to act in their shareholders' best interests. Based on directors' perceptions, the paper examines responses by Boards to socially related aspects of their governance role and reports on their external orientation and receptiveness toward wider social obligations. The findings suggest that these Boards hold a narrow view of their fiduciary duty, which is closer to the shareholder model than the stakeholder approach to corporate governance.
Keywords: corporate social responsibility; CSR; sustainability; strategy; competitive advantage; value creation; company growth; Board attitudes; compliance; community engagement; corporate governance; directors perceptions. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=17889 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijbget:v:4:y:2008:i:1:p:17-39
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().