Manila Marcuccio

European Union: From the Green Paper to the European Alliance on CSR

From the perspective of the European Union (EU), the justification for the support it lends to CSR lies in the fact that it regards it as the contribution of business to sustainable development. As a business strategy, CSR is directly linked to the achievement of the strategic objective established in the Final Declaration of the Lisbon European Council (March 2000): by 2010, ‘to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’. Each sector of society can contribute to this strategic objective from its own activity, characteristics and capacities. In this context, CSR expresses the engagement of the business sector in the construction of a Europe characterised by sustainable economic development and social cohesion. The EC considers that companies can, by incorporating CSR into their business values, practices and policies, at least help to minimise the negative social and environmental consequences of their activity, thus contributing to the objective mentioned above.

The Role of International and Intermediary Organizations

When we pose the debate on public policies and CSR, it is very usual to start from the assumption that this is a matter that affects the relationship between corporations, governments and social organizations. However, a closer look at what is happening in the various states of Europe reveals that a crucial part in the implementation of these public policies is played by international organizations that promote the development of CSR on a global scale and the intermediary organizations that have appeared in some countries and whose activity lies midway between government and business. Both have a very important part to play in the development of CSR public policies, as governments seek frameworks of legitimation and mediation for the implementation of their policies.

Conclusions: Keys to Understanding Public Policies on Corporate Social Responsibility in Europe

What role should governments play in the development of public policies on CSR? The main aim of our research has been to answer this question. To this end, we have devised an interpretative key that has enabled us to analyse the various models for action employed by European governments and identify the basic elements to analyse and understand government action on CSR.

The Agora Model: Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain

We use the term agora to refer to the way CSR public policies are developed in the Mediterranean countries, among which we include Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. They are countries that have shown interest in this issue recently, especially since 2002, following the publication by the European Commission (EC) of the Green Paper ‘Promoting a European framework for Corporate Social Responsibility’ (July 2001). Most of them have started to include CSR activities in their political agenda.

The Business in the Community Model: The UK and Ireland

This model comprises the Anglo-Saxon countries: the UK and Ireland. The concept of business in the community refers to the way the governments and the societies we are concerned with here understand the role of enterprise in society, especially as regards the resolution of social challenges and the part played by business in community development.

The Sustainability and Citizenship Model: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and Luxembourg

The sustainability and citizenship model approaches CSR from a perspective that focuses first and foremost on those corporations that are regarded as ‘good citizens’. The countries we explore in this model of CSR — Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and Luxembourg — have experience in sustainable development policies. This experience, accumulated mainly in the 1990s, places CSR activities in the framework of long-term sustainability.

The Partnership Model: Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands

In this model, the strengths of state, market, and civil society actors are combined to create an effective governance system that overcomes the weaknesses afflicting each individually. We use the term ‘partnership’ to refer to the way CSR public policies tend to be designed and implemented in the Nordic and Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Sweden and Finland). These countries have ample experience in environmental management, to which the CSR component has now been added, and a favourable historical tradition of social negotiation, in which the relationship between government and enterprise is regarded as positive and includes aspects of collaboration. The Nordic model, which has its roots in a long-established practice that shows a preference for collaborative agreements and consensus between different types of organizations, is characterised basically by the use of partnership as a tool and the creation of an area of shared welfare. Ultimately, the urge to embrace public-private partnerships can be interpreted as a result of Scandinavian political culture, which several research projects point out puts stress on cooperation, consensus and participation (Greve, 2003).

A Relational Governance Approach to Analysing Public Policies on Corporate Social Responsibility

In this chapter we describe the analytical framework that we have built in order to analyse and interpret the differents profiles of European governments in order to promote and develop CSR. It is an interdisciplinary analytical framework which feeds from transversal theoretical elements of political science, public administration and CSR.

Governments and Corporate Social Responsibility: Context, Aim and Perspectives

In the first part of this chapter we present a synthesis of what we consider to be the most important approaches to the action of governments in the framework of promoting and developing CSR. A brief introduction to the main research done in this field will serve as a point of departure for our proposal for analysis. Subsequently, in the second part of the chapter, we will introduce the elements for analysis and debate on governments and CSR.

Introduction: Strategic Public Policy Vision for Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR). In the last seven years, this phrase has made an impressive entrance on the economic and business scene and also the political and social scene. Just listing the terms that have been laid on the table during that time, and clarifying them, would be enough to fill a book: social action, socially responsible investment, management by values, corporate citizenship, business ethics, the triple bottom line, reputation, and so on. But it is not merely a question of terminology: the diversity of names is only the visible part of the existence of a multitude of initiatives, proposals and experiences that neither share the same quality nor respond to the same type of options. It is precisely this issue of quality and options that we still need to address.