Social Responsibility, Strategic Management and Comprehensive Corporate Development: Old Roots, New Issues?

As socio-economic stakeholders, in most of the countries in the world, businesses, institutions, trade and public organizations and associations presently all heavily question the possibility of ensuring compatibility and a certain consistency among major societal issues with their own strategies and development.

The “managerial” terms for referring to such issues vary, but we note they are increasingly disseminated. Given the present preeminence of certain expressions such as “CSR” for “corporate social responsibility” in the dialogue of many managers and in researcher publications, we could be led to think such concepts and reasoning are new and linked to a contemporary context. This, however, is not the case, since we also find such concerns with theoreticians and corporate specialists as of the mid 20th century, and more broadly, as of a quarter of a century!

Hence, we may wonder if this is not a cyclical fad phenomenon, or if, on the contrary, in the present day we find ourselves in a much more critical situation than in the past, which would lead to highlighting old, underlying concerns from another angle.