IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ins/quaeco/qf04023.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Corporate Social Responsibility in Europe: Analyzing Business in Transnational Contexts

Author

Listed:
  • Secchi Davide

    (Department of Economics, University of Insubria, Italy)

Abstract

Ever since the European Commission (EC) defined what “corporate social responsibility” is, European debate has taken up the definition as given. However a brief review of literature soon highlights that the adopted definition has given rise to some relevant concerns and is not without its critics. These criticisms might relate to the fact that literature on the issue is mainly produced by American scholars, and does not completely match European needs. Following this hypothesis, one can argue that the “new” EC definition is, in fact, an old one. However, the point which seems to have been missed revolves around certain contextual differences, it is this point which this paper aims to shed light on. The aim of this contribution is to suggest the right tools with which to take diversities into account, in order to reach a definition that allows thought on corporate social responsibility to be a dynamic concept. How can we consider CSR in different contexts? Do we need to define it differently in relation to each context or does it have a general (common) meaning? The model here presented is based on two standard economic variables (size and sector) on the corporate side, and on three variables (socio-cultural, economic structure, and institutional) on the country-specific side. The result of the matrix gives a new way to define CSR in different contexts and suggests that location is the important issue, neglected both in the EC’s and in the scholars’ approaches. Key words: corporate social responsibility, stakeholder approach, European Commission, CSR modeling

Suggested Citation

  • Secchi Davide, 2004. "Corporate Social Responsibility in Europe: Analyzing Business in Transnational Contexts," Economics and Quantitative Methods qf04023, Department of Economics, University of Insubria.
  • Handle: RePEc:ins:quaeco:qf04023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.eco.uninsubria.it/RePEc/pdf/QF2004_34.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Constantina Bichta, 2003. "Corporate socially responsible (CSR) practices in the context of Greek industry," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 10(1), pages 12-24, March.
    2. Daniel Kahneman, 2003. "A Psychological Perspective on Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 162-168, May.
    3. Ataur Rahman Belal, 2002. "Stakeholder accountability or stakeholder management: a review of UK firms' social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting (SEAAR) practices," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 9(1), pages 8-25, March.
    4. Secchi Davide, 2004. "The Italian Experience in Social Reporting," Economics and Quantitative Methods qf04016, Department of Economics, University of Insubria.
    5. Freeman, R. Edward & Liedtka, Jeanne, 1991. "Corporate social responsibility: A critical approach," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 92-98.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giannarakis Grigoris, 2016. "The Challenges of Corporate Social Responsibility Assessment Methodologies," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(1), pages 39-55.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Davide Secchi, 2006. "The Italian experience in social reporting: an empirical analysis," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(3), pages 135-149, July.
    2. Jose‐Manuel Prado‐Lorenzo & Isabel Gallego‐Alvarez & Isabel M. Garcia‐Sanchez, 2009. "Stakeholder engagement and corporate social responsibility reporting: the ownership structure effect," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(2), pages 94-107, March.
    3. Concetta Carnevale & Maria Mazzuca & Sergio Venturini, 2012. "Corporate Social Reporting in European Banks: The Effects on a Firm's Market Value," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(3), pages 159-177, May.
    4. Isabel Ma García‐Sánchez, 2008. "Corporate social reporting: segmentation and characterization of Spanish companies," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(4), pages 187-198, July.
    5. Mzoughi, Naoufel, 2011. "Farmers adoption of integrated crop protection and organic farming: Do moral and social concerns matter?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(8), pages 1536-1545, June.
    6. Easterlin, Richard A. & Angelescu McVey, Laura, 2009. "Happiness and Growth the World Over: Time Series Evidence on the Happiness-Income Paradox," IZA Discussion Papers 4060, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Marcelo Royo-Vela & Jonathan Cuevas Lizama, 2022. "Creating Shared Value: Exploration in an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-23, July.
    8. Halkos, George & Skouloudis, Antonis, 2015. "Exploring corporate disclosure on climate change: Evidence from the Greek business sector," MPRA Paper 64566, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Mitzi Cubilla‐Montilla & Ana‐Belén Nieto‐Librero & Ma Purificación Galindo‐Villardón & Ma Purificación Vicente Galindo & Isabel‐María Garcia‐Sanchez, 2019. "Are cultural values sufficient to improve stakeholder engagement human and labour rights issues?," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(4), pages 938-955, July.
    10. Jill Brown & William Forster, 2013. "CSR and Stakeholder Theory: A Tale of Adam Smith," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 112(2), pages 301-312, January.
    11. André, Kévin, 2013. "Why Should Business Education Care About Care? Toward an Educare Perspective," ESSEC Working Papers WP1315, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    12. Sezer Ülkü & Chris Hydock & Shiliang Cui, 2022. "Social Queues (Cues): Impact of Others’ Waiting in Line on One’s Service Time," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(11), pages 7958-7976, November.
    13. Heidi Reed, 2024. "“When money is more valuable than people…”: The pandemic as a call for business to care," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 435-455, March.
    14. Hermann, Daniel & Musshoff, Oliver & Agethen, Katrin, 2014. "I will never switch sides: an experimental approach to determine drivers for investment decisions of conventional and organic hog farmers," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 183084, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    15. Layla Branicki & Senia Kalfa & Alison Pullen & Stephen Brammer, 2023. "Corporate Responses to Intimate Partner Violence," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(4), pages 657-677, November.
    16. Hamad Alhumoudi, 2017. "External Social Accounting Developments: Analysis and Discussion of Academic Critiques," Business and Economic Research, Macrothink Institute, vol. 7(1), pages 33-45, June.
    17. Abul Kalam Azad, 2014. "How to Spot Business Ethics?," International Journal of Management Sciences, Research Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 3(8), pages 544-547.
    18. Tobias Hahn & Mandy Scheermesser, 2006. "Approaches to corporate sustainability among German companies," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(3), pages 150-165, July.
    19. Zainab Al Mubarak & Anji Ben Hamed & Muneer Al Mubarak, 2018. "Impact of corporate social responsibility on bank’s corporate image," Social Responsibility Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 15(5), pages 710-722, November.
    20. Joseph R. Blasi & Douglas L. Kruse & Harry M. Markowitz, 2010. "Risk and Lack of Diversification under Employee Ownership and Shared Capitalism," NBER Chapters, in: Shared Capitalism at Work: Employee Ownership, Profit and Gain Sharing, and Broad-based Stock Options, pages 105-136, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ins:quaeco:qf04023. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Segreteria Dipartimento (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feinsit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.