Corporate Social Responsibility from the Perspective of Corporate Secretaries

Corporate secretaries make a considerable contribution to corporate social responsibility (CSR) processes by the nature of the positions and responsibilities they hold in organisations. They act as a servant or full member of the board of directors, the body that formulates corporate strategies; which are subsequently executed by executive directors. When corporate secretaries become full members of the board, they pass on their duties as the secretary to someone else and take on the role of governance in directorship capacity. The field of CSR has impacted on all professions that aspire to make a positive contribution to societies. For this reason, members of the chartered secretaries’ professional body and those other chartered bodies in the UK who statutorily can become corporate secretaries have had to absorb all the challenges and opportunities that the field of CSR has thrown at them, albeit in collaboration with their other senior executive colleagues in organisations. This chapter seeks to analyse how corporate secretaries have contributed and continue to contribute to recent developments in the field of CSR. The chapter argues that modern stakeholders look on corporate entities to meet all their economic, social, ethical, legal and philanthropic responsibilities whilst remaining virtuous, Friedman (1962, 1970), Elkington (1997) and Carroll and Buchholtz (2003) even though meeting these responsibilities may at first sight appear contradictory and impossible, de Wit and Meyer (2004). Wood (1991) argues that business and society are interwoven rather than distinct entities. If this is so, then it is relevant to ask how today’s professionals including corporate secretaries are coping with the task of meeting their CSR requirements to society. There are numerous benefits that can emanate from following a good corporate citizenship strategy or being involved in several pro bono publico activities by an entity according to Jones et al. (2006), as this action is one of the variables that determine whether an entity survives and prospers or declines and fails in modern markets.