Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Ward, Halina --- "Corporate Social Responsibility in Law and Policy" [2008] ELECD 287; in Boeger, Nina; Murray, Rachel; Villiers, Charlotte (eds), "Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility

Editor(s): Boeger, Nina; Murray, Rachel; Villiers, Charlotte

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847205612

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Corporate Social Responsibility in Law and Policy

Author(s): Ward, Halina

Number of pages: 31

Extract:

2. Corporate social responsibility in law
and policy
Halina Ward

INTRODUCTION
This chapter is an attempt to draw together two of the themes in my work with
colleagues and research partners over the past six years at the International
Institute for Environment and Development.1
The first of the two themes addressed in this chapter is an analysis of the
links between corporate social responsibility and law. The second concerns the
links between CSR and public policy.
As to the first of the two themes ­ links between CSR and law ­ the roots
of IIED's work lay in a frustration that the definitional insistence that `CSR is
only about voluntary action over and above compliance with legally defined
minimum standards' and the consequent separation of `CSR' and `corporate
accountability' serves no one well ­ from the most conservative business-
person, to the most ambitious ideals-driven NGO or the most market-oriented
government official.
Over the period from 2002­4, IIED worked hard to expand the boundaries
of mainstream thinking on `what is CSR' by insisting that its legal dimensions
needed properly to be factored in. We pursued this endeavour in written papers
and projects, in presentations, and in our advocacy. But the task we had set
ourselves was Sisyphean and ultimately we admitted defeat, choosing to work
under the more comfortable umbrella of `business and sustainable develop-
ment' rather than `corporate responsibility for environment and development'.
The second, closely related theme that this paper addresses concerns the
role of public ...