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Corporate social responsibility and development
UNRISD
UNRISD
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confsum.pdf
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Abstract
"This year marks the 40th anniversary of UNRISD. In commemoration of this date we have just completed a report that analyses the contribution of UNRISD research to thinking and knowledge on social development issues. In preparing the report, it was apparent how the issues of concern to the international development community have changed. Back in the 1960s and 1970s we were particularly concerned about the role of the state in developing countries and why development projects often failed. In the 1980s and 1990s considerable attention was focused on the role of civil society organizations in development and issues of people s participation . These issues remain highly pertinent but increasingly attention is being focused on the role of the private sector in social and sustainable development has emerged as an important concern. Various factors account for this: both economic growth and foreign direct investment have proved elusive for many developing countries; the role of the state in development has come in for considerable criticism and been reassessed; the euphoria with NGOs has subsided; and during the 1980s and early 1990s it became clear that neoliberal policies were granting corporations considerable rights and benefits without commensurate responsibilities and obligations. Development and finance agencies that form part of the bilateral and multilateral systems are now emphasizing so-called good governance and public-private partnerships in their policies and programmes. One of the concrete outcomes of this new approach has been far greater involvement of business in policy dialogues and in the design and implementation of development programmes and projects. And business is being called upon to act more responsibly in relation to social, labour, environment and human rights issues or to engage in what is often called corporate social responsibility . This is quite a different scenario to that which existed 10 or 20 years ago. Then the main concern was how to accelerate foreign direct investment by freeing up trade and investment regimes, with little consideration of social, environmental and human rights impacts. The current situation is also different in another respect. In the past corporate interaction with the public policy process or the public sector consisted, to a large extent, of joint ventures and behind the scenes lobbying. In the build-up to the World Social Summit in 1995, we carried out a broad inquiry into the social effects of globalization, which documented the growing divide between corporate rights and obligations. It was then that we began to look into the impact of transnational corporations in developing countries and this relatively new CSR agenda. A second phase of our work on CSR began in 1997 when we looked in more depth at the so-called greening of business in developing countries, i.e. at what big business was doing to improve its environmental record, and why it was taking environmental issues more seriously."(pg 4)
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2003-11-17
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With permission of the license/copyright holder