ABSTRACT
Corporate social responsibility (CSR), which is by essence a corporate activity, inevitably brings up the issue of the motivations of the organizations practising it. This chapter explores the "business case"—specific to the organization, predictive and potentially encompassing future cash flows discounted to present value. Such a business case has the potential to protect the interests of shareholders and investors, but also to prove that certain CSR undertakings are profitable, and thus make a CSR engagement both more selective and more sustainable. The chapter analyses the practice of CSR project review through a survey of 52 organizations, looking into responsibilities, methodologies, attitudes and differentiating organizational attributes. It proposes a three-dimensional model for CSR business cases with a view to providing practitioners with guidance as to the elements of adequate and relevant decision support. M. Weber suggests that CSR risk-related costs can thus be calculated by multiplying the expected economic impact from CSR-related risks with its probability.
