DOES SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT MAKE GOOD STRATEGIES FOR CORPORATE ACTORS?

Abstract

The concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainable Development (SD), stuck in academia for decades, are now mainstream in the corporate world in rich countries, and growingly in emerging and developing ones. Though these two terms are open to interpretations and may have very different meanings, they refer to the broad idea that corporate actors (CA) should or do take into account a growing range of stakeholders in their activities above shareholders, should or do extend the scope of their strategies so as to incorporate non financial aims such as protecting their employees’ health or improving working conditions in their community, and should or do widen their perspectives in order to include long term stakes such as environmental protection or reduction in social inequalities in their daily activities. The purpose of this article is not to investigate the many interpretations given to these two terms, but to answer two simple questions on the basis of a (partial) survey of the recent litterature dedicated to the role of CSR and SD in corporate actors’ strategies. These questions are “why do CA adopt such CSR or SD strategies”, and “how do they implement them”?

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