Corporate Social Responsibility as Stakeholder Orientation to Management

It would not be inappropriate for someone to claim that the contemporary corporate social responsibility movement is essentially a “stakeholder movement” because the stakeholder approach is central to both CSR discourse and practice. In fact, it is CSR-related questions that animate the discourse on the stakeholder ethos as they continuously draw attention to multiple actors and nexuses of relational networks that accentuate the complex nature of the modern firm or corporation. The complex network of relations that a business organization could subscribe to is not limited to customers, employees, local communities, investors, the media, competition, pressure groups, and the society at large, but rather has come to encompass inanimate entities such as the natural environment and ecology. The argument is that these networks could affect or be affected by the activities of the firm (Rowley 1997). On this account, CSR is an organization's commitment to operate in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner while recognizing the interests of its stakeholders. ¹