Corporate social responsibility, some key theoretical issues and concepts for new ways of doing business

This paper brings together some of the main scholarly sources and thinkers of the last fifty years or so, who have been influential in the corporate social responsibility discussions which have become important, once again, as we begin the 21st century. The author creates a narrative of key social, economic and political concepts and themes, which are rationalised (in ways that others might not) from what is often a very disparate, diverse and not always connected discussion on corporate social responsibility. This is not an objective history, charting the developments chronologically, but is the bringing together of some serious thinking in the field of corporate social responsibility in a way that has considerable resonance for both the development of public policy and business practice in corporate citizenship at the beginning of the 21st century.

Working and fighting for progress, for prosperity, for society : brave new business worlds before and beyond corporate citizenship

One of the things that many of us working in corporate citizenship tend to do is to assume that we are actually creating new agendas. Sometimes we do but, more often than not, other thinkers have been there before us. One such man worth revisiting in his extensive writings of over 60 years ago is Aldous Huxley, probably most famous to many for his novel Brave New World. This paper looks briefly at some of the things Huxley had to say that are relevant to our current thinking about the 'soul' of business and its relations to CSR and corporate citizenship.