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CSR Standards and Corporate Ethical Virtues: A Normative Inquiry into the Way Corporations Integrate Stakeholder Expectations

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Corporate Social Responsibility and Governance

Part of the book series: CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance ((CSEG))

Abstract

With the growing concern of both corporations and their stakeholders towards social responsibility reporting, CSR standards and guidelines have become a common point of reference for practitioners, regulating bodies and scholars alike. However, research in the business ethics field seems to have given less attention to the way ethical concepts and models relate to such CSR standards.

The paper evaluates the principles of three most prominent CSR standards and guidelines – Global Reporting Initiative, United Nations Global Compact, and ISO26000 – through the lens of the Corporate Ethical Virtues Model (Kaptein M, Ethics management: Auditing and developing the ethical content of organizations. Springer, Dordrecht, 1998; Kaptein M, Eur Manag J 17:625–634, 1999; Kaptein M, J Org Behav 29(7):923–947, 2008; Kaptein M, Hum Relat 64(6):843–869, 2011). Namely, it inquires how the principles and reporting criteria pertaining to these CSR standards help corporations embed seven ethical virtues which represent organizational conditions for ethical conduct: clarity, consistency, achievability, supportability, visibility, discussability and sanctionability. The paper concludes that cross-reporting using multiple standards is the key for corporations to achieve the organisational virtues advanced by the Corporate Ethical Virtues Model and in this way to effectively integrate stakeholder expectations within the corporate framework.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center in Applied Ethics (CCEA), University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Mihaela Constantinescu

  2. Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Muel Kaptein

Authors
  1. Mihaela Constantinescu
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  2. Muel Kaptein
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Correspondence to Mihaela Constantinescu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law, London Metropolitan University, London, United Kingdom

    Samuel O. Idowu

  2. Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Claus Strue Frederiksen

  3. Economics and Administration Sciences, Marmara University, Beykoz Istanbul, Turkey

    Asli Yüksel Mermod

  4. University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Morten Ebe Juul Nielsen

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Constantinescu, M., Kaptein, M. (2015). CSR Standards and Corporate Ethical Virtues: A Normative Inquiry into the Way Corporations Integrate Stakeholder Expectations. In: Idowu, S., Frederiksen, C., Mermod, A., Nielsen, M. (eds) Corporate Social Responsibility and Governance. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10909-1_8

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