Key Initiatives in Corporate Social Responsibility by Samuel O. Idowu

Author:Samuel O. Idowu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

10.3 Challenges and Opportunities faced by Nation in the Twenty-First Century

From the very beginning concerned with numbers of desultory social activities performed by business and NGOs mostly, CSR begins to play an increasingly important role in a more focused and organized manner throughout a decade of its short history in Lithuania (Vilkė, 2014a). Several stages of key CSR initiatives ’ development in Lithuania are already available to discuss, pertaining to relevant impact of social, economic, environmental and political challenges faced by nation in the twenty-first century.

CSR was an object of important global and EU debate under globalization, competitiveness and sustainable development. Therefore, it is certainly true that EU acted as the crucial accelerator in forcing CSR to Lithuanian institutional agenda , business practice and NGOs (Ruževičius & Serafinas, 2006; Vilkė, 2011c). CSR in Lithuania was firstly associated with the Lisbon Strategy (2000) for economic, social and environmental objectives as far as it assumed that the company with CSR contributed better job creation and improvement of working conditions, labour rights protection, scientific innovation and technological development. The EU Council recommended member-states “to encourage companies to develop their social responsibility ” and at the same time Communication on “Implementing the Partnership for growth and jobs: making Europe a pole of excellence on corporate social responsibility” (March 22, 2006) had stated, that the Commission will focus on CSR, especially in those member-states where the concept of CSR was less known (Vasiljievienė & Vasiljevas, 2008; Vilkė, 2011d).

Thus Lithuania, as a new EU member-state, was brought into the same wave as many former Soviet Block countries (Fenger, 2007; Vasiljevas & Genevičiūtė, 2004). The European Parliament was convinced that encouragement of corporate social and environmental responsibilities was at the heart of European social model, Europe’s sustainable development strategy and in response to social challenges of economic globalization (Report, 2006). Furthermore, in July 28, 2009 the EC in Communication “Sustainable Development Mainstreaming in EU policies” had acknowledged that the “European companies incurring higher corporate social responsibility commitments, will increase the capacity for sustainable development”. These acted as key primary factors, determining conditions for the very first key CSR initiatives , implemented by government and business associations together, summarized under the very first Lithuanian CSR Development Programme (Report, 2006).

Internal conditions for the key CSR initiatives had been mostly related to the Vision of the State in the Long-Term Economic Development Strategy of Lithuania until the year 2015, namely, “knowledge-based economy is becoming a priority target of Lithuania. The EU is determined to create a knowledge-based society during the coming decade: in 2015 Lithuania expects to reach a similar level in this sphere. However, a knowledge-based society is a challenging objective for Lithuania which may be difficult to deliver unless a high degree of consensus between the widest circles of society can be achieved and unless there is a strong intellectual political will” (Long-Term Strategy…, 2002).

CSR encouragement in National Sustainable Development Strategy of the Republic of Lithuania (Sustainable Development Strategy…, 2003) was attributed to global economic challenges of sustainable development.

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