Originally written by Simon Joyce on Small Business
A trend that has been gaining traction in businesses both large and small for the last ten years or so is the concept of corporate social responsibility.
Adopted globally by businesses of all sizes, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is clearly here to stay and for good reason.
For this trend to have stuck around, it obviously holds great merit. Be it for the business, clients, customers, even employees – or all of them equally, CSR has taken such hold, it is estimated that as many as 90% of the world’s largest corporations now formally codify their CSR performance into official documentation yearly.
What is corporate social responsibility?
CSR is largely self-explanatory. Though the precise definition is open to the interpretation of individual businesses, it can be generally defined as a rough series of ethical principles.
That is, a business will choose to go over and above what is strictly necessary to deliver social, economic and environmental benefits to anyone affected by the business and its activities.
In a nutshell, CSR aims to encourage businesses to improve the lives and situations of as many people as possible. This can happen across multiple different facets of society, like helping with homelessness,