Title:	Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance
Authors:	Lorenzo Sacconi Margaret Blair R. Edward Freeman and Alessandro Vercelli
Keywords:	Corporate Governance
Issue Date:	2011
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Description:	About the general subject of this book As early as 2005, well before the eruption of the global financial crisis, the atten- tion of the international economic press was attracted by the corporate social responsibility (CSR) phenomenon. The Economist, in particular, acknowledged the spectacular growth of company CSR initiatives throughout the world, and through the relations between companies, business associations, stakeholders’ representative groups, NGOs, universities, international organizations, and yet others. What struck The Economist as especially disturbing was that: Today all companies, but especially the big ones, are enjoined from every side to worry less about profits and to be socially responsible instead. Surprisingly, perhaps, these demands have elicited a willing, not to say avid, response in enlightened boardrooms everywhere: companies at every oppor- tunity now pay elaborate obeisance to the principle of CSR. They have CSR officers, CSR consultants, CSR Departments, and CSR initiatives coming out of their ears. (The Economist, 22 January 2005, p. 11) The idea – along with a famous dictum by Milton Friedman of the 1970s – was that boards of directors, insufficiently committed to making profits for their shareholders, were instead engaging in ‘pernicious benevolence’ by being philanthropic with money taken not from their own pockets but from those of the corporate shareholders. What in fact this view entailed was that CSR (i) is not a business-related but a philanthropic activity that ‘altruistic’ manag- ers undertake by misusing corporate money, (ii) as such, it is in contrast with profit maximization and, lastly, (iii) it is a manifestation of managerial slack and (moral) self-dealing.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/50577
ISBN:	978-0-230-30211-2
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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