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Corporate Social Responsibility: Driving Forces and Challenges
Anupam Sharma* and Ravi Kiran
Thapar University, Patiala, India Abstract
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is gaining more and more importance day by day. CSR is not only drawing the corporate magnates into its circumference, but is also luring educationists, social activists, reformists, from all over the world to delve deeper into it. Changing market scenario, globalization, ethical consumerism all are adding heat to the CSR concept. More and more organizations are showing their commitments towards CSR either for enhancing their corporate image or to be in competition. Emergence of different marketing innovations demands direct linkage of corporate social responsibility practices with the business corporate strategies. The present article reviews the CSR literature from 1975 to 2011, conveying changing developments of CSR practices. Keywords: Globalization, ethical consumerism, competition, innovation.
Introduction
In today’s changing world, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a growing area of interest for academics, practitioners and entrepreneurs, in terms of both theory and practice. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept whereby companies integrate social, environmental and health concerns in their business strategy (policy) and operations and in their interactions with stakeholders on a voluntary basis. The social responsibility of business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time (Carroll, 1979). As the world is shrinking due to globalization the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has acquired an undeniably high degree of relevance and scope in a large number of sectors. Many academicians and practitioners