Relational Economics by Josef Wieland

Author:Josef Wieland
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030451127
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

7.2 Corporate Responsibility and Externalities

In the current public debate, responsible behaviour on the part of the firm is being explored and/or demanded in various areas. Working for the benefit of the firm’s home region; adhering to social standards on the production of goods and services at both the global and national level; mitigating or solving social problems; managing urbanisation, energy and water provision; respecting human rights at the national and international level; and ensuring the integrity and legality of corporate activities around the globe via compliance management—this is just a small sampling of the topics addressed in CSR, which are to a large extent informed by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (for an overview cf. Bhattacharya, 2011; Freeman & Hasnaoui, 2011; UN Global Compact, 2015).

The responsibility expected from firms is based on political, legal or social events in the context of economic transactions for global value creation, the impacts of which are attributed to the firm as a component and consequence of its strategy and business operations. As a rule, firms respond to societal demands for their engagement on the basis of traditional ties to a certain region; by means of established leadership policies based on social partnership; or, in the case of global relations, by adhering to international standards, which are most often the outcomes of multi-stakeholder dialogues or other decision-making platforms (cf. Wieland, 2014, especially Chaps. 5, 6 and 8). From both a legal and political standpoint, CSR standards codify events that are voluntary but not arbitrary (cf. BMAS, 2010, 2018). They are not arbitrary because standards, as Lawrence Busch (2011) has claimed, are recipes for reality:Standards are means by which we construct realities. […] they are part of the technical, political, social, economic and ethical infrastructure that constitutes human societies. (Ibid., p. 13)

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