New Directions for Corporate Social Responsibility and Health?

Chris Yuill ()
Additional contact information
Chris Yuill: Robert Gordon University

Chapter Chapter 7 in Corporate Social Responsibility, 2017, pp 119-136 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Health is a fundamental element of human wellbeing. As such, many Corporate Social Responsibility activities are aimed at improving health, typically externally of communities living in the locality of the extraction of energy resources, though also internally of employees. What this chapter advances is that whilst such activity is welcome and demonstrates a willingness for corporations to positively interact with either local communities or their employees, that intervention is predicated on a particular model of health that is limited in its scope and understanding of what drives good or poor health. That bio-medical model of health is contrasted with the social model of health, which prioritises the explanatory power of social processes in conditioning health. Adopting the social model of health not only provides a deeper, richer and more holistic understanding of health, but also invites different courses of action to take in regards to improving health. In terms of community health, action becomes directed not at the provision of healthcare but tackling the social causes of poor health, such as inequalities of various forms. For employee health the familiar approaches of improving health by encouraging exercise, fitness and healthy eating programmes give way to redesigning the structures of a company, so as to allow employees to gain more autonomy and control—the prime drivers of poor health in the workplace indicated in the research literature.

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Corporate Social Responsibility Activity; Social Model; Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative; Biomedical Model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:csrchp:978-3-319-35083-7_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319350837

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-35083-7_7

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().