At any juncture when an organization goes past simply legitimate compliances and emphatically engages in activities that seem to more extensive social good which is for the most part outside the diversions of the firm and is more customized towards the more extensive social responsibility, the firm is said to have embraced the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (McWilliams et al., 2006). The terms corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate governance (CG), corporate sustainability (CS), corporate citizenship and triple bottom line (TBL) are all being used synonymously with each other and all these terms fall into the broader concept of “ethical business” (Castka et al., 2004). CSR is taking the responsibility to empower people both socially and economically (Albuquerque, 2010). Holme and Watts (1999) suggest that “CSR is a duty of every corporate body to protect the interest of society at large and although every business’s main motive is to earn profit, corporates should take the initiative for welfare of the society and should perform its activities accordingly”. CSR includes elements such as environmental protection, social equity and economic growth and has a strong empathy with the founding principles of quality management (Leonard and McAdam, 2003).
A fundamental belief among business and society scholars is that CSR ‘pays off’ for the organization as well as for the stakeholders and the society in general (Burke and Logsdon, 1996). The concept of CSR contrasts the classic economic argument that management has only one responsibility which is the wealth maximization of its owners. Classical economist Milton Friedman argued that the main aim of management is “to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in the law and those embodied in ethical custom” (Friedman, 2007). Even economists such as Friedman, who had previously suggested
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