University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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protection/environmental enhancement, gender equality, or supporting the education
system (van Marrewijk 2003, Moon 2007). According to Moon (2007) governments
have three major reasons to engage in this form of ‘New Societal Governance’
(Moon 2007): First, governments do not know how to meet the high societal
expectations and try to encourage companies´ CSR activities to assist them in their
tasks of governing. Second, in several countries, especially but not only developing
and transition countries, a considerable gap between Western standards according for
example environmental and employee regulation exists. Under such circumstances
internationally operation companies “export” such institutions (e.g. labour rights,
education and health services for workers and their families) to the countries they
operate in. Third, global political governance (e.g. globally coordinated
environmental regulation) cannot keep pace with the rapid spread of economic
globalisation through corporations. Therefore, corporations are much better suited to
spread standards through collective or individual self-regulation (Moon 2007). Those
two shifts in societal power relations also bear changes in the behaviour of each actor
in relation to each ones contribution to sustainable development. Since the mid 1990s
until today, under the drafted circumstances of new societal governance, networks,
cooperation and collaboration as well as formal alongside with informal agreements
are the fundaments of societal interaction (societal network oriented) (Steurer 2007).
Trust, as a third need, is the ‘glue’ for social and human relations – this is also
applicable for state-business-civil society relations.
CSR-for-SD
The outlined characteristics of CSR and sustainable development (complexity and
contextuality) as well as the necessities for the functioning of the new societal power
divide between state, businesses and civil society (trust, collective action, shared
responsibility) call for two principles: participation and evaluation. Participatory
forms of implementation and evaluation of CSR could be an approach serving both
ends (the challenging characteristics of CSR/SD as well as the prerequisites of new
societal governance) thus, finally, contributing to sustainable development – CSRfor-SD:
• The challenge of complexity - enable to better understand the interlinkages
between economic, environmental and societal concerns through continuous
contributions of complementary resources and competencies (Jonker, Nijhof
2006) and exchange of knowledge (Burchell and Cook 2008) and experiences
between a wide array of stakeholders.
• The challenge of contextuality - enable the mutual construction of reality
and joint understanding of the relevant context of CSR (Cheney and
Christensen 2001, Winn 2001) and what can be seen as an accurate
contribution to sustainable development based on stakeholders views.
• The need for collective action - enable collective action in favour of the
overarching shared goal of sustainable development and thus channelling
energies towards cooperation instead of confrontation between companies
and their stakeholders, especially civil society actors. As Gao and Zhang put
it “sustainability is “working together” of the three dimensions of
sustainability for the purpose of attaining a holistic integration of