The Director of Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

Corporate Sustainability is a business approach that creates long-term stakeholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments. The quality of a company's strategy and management and its performance in dealing with opportunities and risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments can be quantified and used to identify and to select leading companies for investment purposes. Leading sustainability companies display high levels of competence in addressing global and industrial challenges in a variety of areas. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the job accountabilities of a sustainable development director and the job requirements that such a director has to fulfil. After reviewing the litterature of Responsible leadership and also both the aptitudes and competences required to take the leadership in a company's 'sustainable development' policy, we demonstrate how a manager in charge of Corporate Social Responsibility (or Director of Sustainable Development) is encouraged to set up and accompany a formulated strategy. We base our research on recent diverse studies which analyse the new position of a sustainable development director which relates how this function, in a variety of situations, is deployed in organisations. We will conclude our study setting out the complexity of the tasks and difficulties encountered in this very new managerial function.