ABSTRACT
This chapter examines current Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues, and proposes a social connection model to understand the most recent CSR demands up and down the corporate value chain. The current debate envelops the whole value chain, and includes challenges involving the geopolitical contexts in which the various steps of value creation occur. In the chapter, Young's work is used to inform our understanding of responsibility in non-proximate transactions. In addition to addressing issues further up the value chain, upstream CSR demands also go beyond the harm occurring at the various steps of the globally stretched value chain. In relation to the sweatshop debate, the primary goal of social connection CSR is to change the structures and processes that improve worker rights and to exclude systematic human rights violations in and around global supply chains.
