Although the idea of social responsibility has a long and distinguished intellectual pedigree, Corporate Social Responsibility (or CSR ) has re-emerged during the last fifteen years or so as a high-profile concept in both academia and business practice. This revitalized interest has come about largely because of the development of the markets for virtue that have institutionalized CSR in business practices in an unprecedented manner. CSR has achieved organizational distinctiveness within companies (e.g. in managerial and board responsibilities); social and environmental reporting requirements have dramatically increased; socially responsible investment funds have not only established themselves in their own right, but have also informed more mainstream investment criteria, particularly regarding social and environmental risk; a CSR consultancy industry has emerged, along with various vanguard groups and NGOs who seek not only to promote CSR, but also to bring critical perspectives to bear and to raise CSR standards; and governments around the globe have encouraged investment in CSR, better reporting of these activities, and the implementation of CSR initiatives that complement broader public policies.

As research in and around CSR blossoms as never before, this new four-volume collection from Routledge 's acclaimed Critical Perspectives on Business and Management series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature. Edited by two scholars from Nottingham University 's world-class International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, the collection gathers foundational and canonical work, together with innovative and cutting-edge applications and interventions.

With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Corporate Social Responsibility is an essential work of reference. The collection will be particularly useful as an essential database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar and sometimes overlooked texts. For researchers, students, practitioners, and policy-makers, it is as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

The papers included in the volume explore how mobilizing Boltanski and Thevenot's EW framework helps address questions regarding the premises and dynamics of agreement and disagreement in coordinated action, both within and across organizations, and by so doing, help advance our understanding of organizational processes more generally. The book is organized into four sections, each with contributions that address one of the four core theoretical objectives around which the volume is structured (1) to clarify how individuals manage the contradictions and compromises inherent to organizational pluralism; (2) to look at organizations critically by unpacking the roles of rhetoric and justification in the practice of critique; (3) to reconsider valuation and evaluation in organizations; and (4) to push the boundaries of the EW framework. These four objectives provide a scaffolding that helps further embed the framework in our contemporary thinking about organizations.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) expresses a fundamental morality in the way a company behaves toward society. It follows ethical behaviour toward stakeholders and recognises the spirit of the legal and regulatory environment. The idea of CSR gained momentum in the late 1950s and 1960s with the expansion of large conglomerate corporations and became a popular subject in the 1980s with R. Edward Freeman's Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach and the many key works of Archie B. Carroll, Peter F. Drucker, and others. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008-2010, CSR has again become a focus for evaluating corporate behaviour. First published in 1953, Howard R. Bowen's Social Responsibilities of the Businessman was the first comprehensive discussion of business ethics and social responsibility. It created a foundation by which business executives and academics could consider the subjects as part of strategic planning and managerial decision-making. Though written in another era, it is regularly and increasingly cited because of its relevance to the current ethical issues of business operations in the United States. Many experts believe it to be the seminal book on corporate social responsibility. This new edition of the book includes an introduction by Jean-Pascal Gond, Professor of Corporate Social Responsibility at Cass Business School, City University of London, UK and a foreword by Peter Geoffrey Bowen, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver, USA who is Howard R. Bowen's eldest son.