The View from the Boardroom - UNDP Trinidad and Tobago

The View from the Boardroom - CEO Study on Corporate Social Responsibility in Trinidad and TobagoDefinitional Questions– CSR and SustainabilityThere are as many definitions of theconcept CSR as there are authorsand analysts. Approaches towardsexplaining and defining the ideaof corporate societal commitmentunderwent multiple adjustments andchanges throughout past decades andthe advent of conservationist principlesand environmental concerns broadenedthe thinking about the Private Sector’scommitment to the public realm.Originating in North America andbeing dominated by U.S.-based authorsand practitioners, CSR in its early formswas described as the “obligations ofbusinessmen to pursue those policies,to make those decisions or to followthose lines of action which are desirablein terms of the objectives and values ofour society”. 1 And other authors haveonly intensified the focus on issues ofsocial development when they assertthat “in its broadest sense, corporatesocial responsibility represents aconcern with the needs and goals ofsociety which goes beyond the merelyeconomic. Insofar as the businesssystem as it exists today can onlysurvive in an effectively functioningfree society, the corporate socialresponsibility movement representsa broad concern with business’s rolein supporting and improving thesocial order. 2 More recent definitionsrefer directly to a company’sstakeholders whose interests shouldbe a determining factor for corporatebehaviour well beyond mere bottomline considerations. For example, theWorld Business Council for SocialDevelopment has defined the conceptas “the continuous commitmentby business to behave ethically andcontribute to sustainable developmentwhile improving the quality of life ofthe workforce and their families aswell as of the local community andsociety at large”. Many definitionsof CSR are emphasising almostexclusively the voluntary commitmentof corporations as free agents and donot include anything mandatory thatmay result from legislative and otherregulatory frameworks. The historicalevolution of CSR and the myriad ofdefinitions seem to confirm legendarycorporate responsibility theorist DowVotaw’s view that “the term [socialresponsibility] is a brilliant one; itmeans something, but not always thesame thing, to everybody. To some itconveys the idea of legal responsibilityor liability; to others, it means sociallyresponsible behaviour in an ethicalsense […] many simply equate itwith a charitable contribution”. 3 Theobvious terminological shortcomingof the label ‘CSR’ is its narrow focuson the socio-economic dimension ofcorporate outreach addressing pressingsocietal concerns. The equally andinterconnected issue of environmentalprotection with its dominant topicalframework of climate change is notadequately reflected in the choiceof CSR as the name for companyengagement in the non-market specificenvironment. Instead, the often citedmodel of the ‘Triple Bottom Line’appears to fill the conceptual gap moreadequately including the environmentalperformance as well as the social1 Howard R. Bowen, ‘Social Responsibilities of the Businessman’, New York, Harper & Row 1953, quoted in: Archie B. Carroll, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility – Evolution of a Definitional Construct’,Business and Society, Vol.38, No.3, p.270.2 Richard Eells and Clarence Walton, ‘Conceptual Foundations of Business’, quoted in ibid, p.278.3 Dow Votaw, Genius Becomes Rare’, California Management Review, Spring 1973, Vol.15, p.16.12