A New Approach to CSR: Company Stakeholder Responsibility
22 Pages Posted: 30 Jul 2008
Date Written: July 29, 2008
Abstract
In this paper, we propose to replace "corporate social responsibility" with "company stakeholder responsibility." This is not just semantics, but a new interpretation of the very purpose of CSR. "Company" signals that all forms of value creation and trade and all businesses, from start-ups to large publicly held corporations, need to be involved. "Stakeholder" suggests that the main goal of CSR is to create value for key stakeholders and fulfill our responsibilities to them. And "Responsibility" implies that we cannot separate business from ethics. We will argue that taking a stakeholder approach to business is ideally suited to integrate business, ethics, and societal considerations. Stakeholder theory is about value creation and trade - it is a managerial theory about how business works. It asks both business and ethics questions about each stakeholder relationship.
Keywords: business ethics, ethics, stakeholder, corporate social responsibility, company stakeholder responsibility, value creation and trade
JEL Classification: A10, M10, I20
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation