ABSTRACT
The longest-running strand of philanthropic corporate social responsibility (CSR) emerged and evolved in the commercial sector; the employment of CSR as a policy tool for addressing social issues has taken place in the public sector; and the idea of using of CSR as a reaction to globalization has mainly been advanced in the non-profit sector. Current approaches to CSR in England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany and France reflect at least one and sometimes all three of the historical CSR strands. This again depends on the particular country's mixed economy of welfare because the English mixed economy has a relatively larger commercial sector than any of the other countries in the analysis; the philanthropic CSR strand continues to occupy a significant space in the current English CSR context. The current CSR agendas of the European welfare states analysed have been influenced to a smaller or greater degree by three parallel developments: philanthropic CSR, social policy CSR, and globalization CSR.
