De responsabilidad social a sostenibilidad corporativauna revisión actualizada

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a discipline of high interest to academics and practitioners. Nevertheless, there is no consensus yet on a definition and fundamental approaches. Over the last decades, new components of CSR have appeared, together with other derivative concepts that incorporate a very marked environmental dimension that conditions the rest of the ideas, as a result of the increasing awareness of the environmental deterioration. Despite its origin in the expectations and demands of individuals and social groups, corporate responsibility is the source of competitive advantages, which include the image and reputation improvement for the companies, so the positive implementation of the CSR turns out to be of high interest for enterprises. The aim of this paper, based on the content of the doctoral thesis by González-Masip (2017), is to carry out a theoretical review of the concepts of corporate social responsibility, identifying some of its foundations, components and temporal evolution, analyzing its relationship with corporate environmental responsibility and a review of other concepts related to CSR, such as corporate sustainability or corporate citizenship. Based fundamentally on research papers, this article helps to understand the phenomenon of corporate responsibility, corporate social action and its various derivatives, identifying the relationships and connections between the various concepts to get an overview of the issue. It also allows us to understand the diverse proposals of corporate social image that the company can reflect through its communication initiatives, and that influence the level of acceptance and effectiveness among consumers and other stakeholders.