An exploration of developments of corporate social responsibility

This research sets out to contribute knowledge about developments and implementation of corporate social responsibility. The six papers used in the submission (thesis) bring together different perspectives of corporate social responsibility garnered from empirical investigations of corporate entities in the UK which was originally termed by scholars as CSR 1.0 model consisting of - defensive, charitable, promotional and strategic Visser (2010), Claydon (2011), Idowu and Schmidpeter (2016) and Camilleri (2017). It revolved round the following dominant paradigms - greed, philanthropy, marketing, management and responsibility. It became apparent that there was the need to use a different model of CSR to deal with social and environmental issues of the 21st century Visser (2014). That old model of CSR - CSR 1.0 was originally the strand of CSR which was perceived, propagated practiced and understood by different actors in the field of CSR in the United Kingdom – a country which is an acknowledged leader in the field worldwide Ward and Smith (2006) and elsewhere. CSR 1.0 model was noted to have failed to have any significant impact on many of the most serious global CSR challenges (Visser, 2014). Hence, the need for CSR 2.0 model which is now in vogue became urgent. The areas covered by the studies in the submission are – motivations for CSR reporting by corporate entities, practicing CSR by corporate entities in the UK, corporate secretaries contributions to corporate entities’ embedding of CSR into their strategies and operational practices, using accounting information for decision making purposes in an attempt to promote sustainable development, piecing together in a logical sequence the history of CSR in the UK and the ideological source of CSR. The sole objective of the exercise is to derive a coherent view of how CSR has journeyed through its different stages of metamorphosis in the United Kingdom up to the period of the sixth paper used in the submission (2012). This thesis therefore presents an analytical account of the research projects at different times namely 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011a, 2011b and 2012 which have culminated into the six papers that form the cornerstone of the submission. The research problem it explores is divided into six research perspectives which culminated into the six papers noted in Table 1 of Section 3 and made up of six research questions in four components. In 1987 the Brundtland Report had brought the issue of sustainable development and the consequences of our failure to operate sustainably to our consciousness. Similarly in June 1992, the Earth Summit of the UN Conference on Environment and Development had set what is often referred to as Agenda 21, which documented the United Nation’s plan for the world in the 21st century in CSR terms. At the beginning of the second millennium, the quest to put into action and demonstrate some reasonable awareness of what social responsibility is and what corporate entities and individual citizens around the world should do in terms of CSR had already been put in place around the globe. The United Nations had initiated a Millennium Summit of 189 world leaders at the UN Headquarters in New York to set the Eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2015. The putting in place of the MDGs 2015 brought about calls for more understanding of many of the issues surrounding CSR a number of new scholars in the thriving field of CSR had emerged. It had downed on this researcher some three years into the 21st century that a number of areas in CSR need more understanding, this heralded the commencement of his studies and journey in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility and all its related areas. What follows has chronicled six of this researcher’s studies in CSR