Dictionary of Corporate Social Responsibility

This book is a concise and authoritative reference work and dictionary in the field of corporate social responsibility, sustainability, business ethics and corporate governance. It provides reliable definitions to more than 600 terms and concepts for researchers and professionals alike. By its definitions the dictionary helps users to understand the meanings of commonly used terms in CSR, and the roles and functions of CSR-related international organizations. Furthermore, it helps to identify keynotes on international guidelines, codes and principles relevant to CSR. The role of CSR in the business world has developed from a fig leaf marketing front into an important and indispensable aspect of corporate behavior over the past years. Sustainable strategies are valued, desired and deployed more and more by relevant players in business, politics, and societies all over the world. Both research and corporate practice therefore see CSR as a guiding principle for business success.

• Accountability
• Business Ethics
• CSR
• Collaborative Governance
• Corporate Responsibility Index
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Corporate Sustainability
• Cross-Cultural Management
• Efficiency
• Energy Conservation
• Environmental Governance
• Environmental Responsibility
• Fair Trade
• Green Economy
• Life Cycle Thinking
• Responsible Business
• Social Innovation
• Sustainable Development
• Sustainable Enterprise
• Transparency

“The Dictionary of Corporate Social Responsibility aims to provide background information on the concepts surrounding CSR by providing concise definitions of key terms. … the core content would be of interest to students of CSR as a starting point to the wider topic.” (Gina Nason, Reference Reviews, Vol. 30 (2), 2016)

• London Guildhall Faculty of Business & Law, London Metropolitan University, London, United Kingdom

  Samuel O. Idowu

• Legendre-Soulé Distinguished Chair in Business Ethics, Loyola University, New Orleans, USA

  Nicholas Capaldi

• Institute of Economics, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany

  Matthias S. Fifka

• International Training Center, International Labour Organization, Turin, Italy

  Liangrong Zu

• Cologne Business School (CBS), Köln, Germany

  René Schmidpeter

Samuel O Idowu is a senior lecturer in Accounting and Corporate Social Responsibility at the London Guildhall Schools of Business and Law, London Metropolitan University where he was course organizer for Accounting Joint degrees, Course Leader/Personal Academic Adviser (PAA) for students taking Accounting Major/Minor and Accounting Joint degrees and currently Course Leader for Accounting and Banking degree. Samuel is a Professor of CSR and Sustainability at Nanjing University of Finance & Economics, China. He is a fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Chartered Secretaries & Administrators and a named freeman of the City of London.

Samuel has published about fifty or articles in both professional and academic journals and contributed chapters in edited books and is the Editor-in-Chief of two major global reference books by Springer – the Encyclopediaof Corporate Social Responsibility (ECSR) and the Dictionary of Corporate Social Responsibility (DCSR) and he is a Series Editor for Springer’s books on CSR, Sustainability, Ethics and Governance. Samuel has been in academia for 27 years winning one of the Highly Commended Awards of Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence both in 2008 and 2014. In 2010, one of his edited books was placed in 18^th position out of forty top Sustainability books by Cambridge University Programme for Sustainability Leadership. He has examined for the following professional bodies: the Chartered Institute of Bankers (CIB) and the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and has marked examination papers for the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). His teaching career started in November 1987 at Merton College, Morden, Surrey; he was a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at North East Surrey College of Technology (Nescot) for thirteen years where he was the Course Leader forBA (Hons) Business Studies, ACCA and CIMA courses. He has also held visiting lectureship posts at Croydon College and Kingston University both in the county of Surrey, England. He was a senior lecturer at London Guildhall University prior to its merger with the University of North London; when London Metropolitan University was created in August 2002.

Samuel has served as an external examiner to a number of UK Universities including the University of Sunderland, the University of Ulster, Belfast and Coleraine, Northern Ireland and Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford. He is currently an External Examiner at the University of Plymouth, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland and Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK. He was also the Treasurer and a Trustee of Age Concern, Hackney, East London from January 2008 to September 2011. He is a member of the Committee of the Corporate Governance Special Interest Group, of the British Academy of Management (BAM). Samuel is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Management of Environmental Quality Journal, International Journal of Business Administration and Amfiteatru Economic Journal. He has been researching in the field of CSR since 1983 and has attended and presented papers at several national and international conferences and workshops on CSR and has made a number of keynote speeches at international conferences.

Nicholas Capaldi is Legendre-Soulé Distinguished Chair in Business Ethics at Loyola University, New Orleans. He also serves as Director of the National Center for Business Ethics. He taught previously at: the University of Tulsa where he was McFarlin Research Professor of Law; Columbia University; Queens College, City University of New York; The United States Military Academy at West Point, and the National University of Singapore. Professor Capaldi received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. His principal research and teaching interest is in public policy and its intersection with political science, philosophy, law, religion, and economics. He is the author of 7 books, over 80 articles, and editor of six anthologies. He is a member of the editorial board of six journals and has served most recently as editor of Public Affairs Quarterly. Professor Capaldi is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Mellon Foundation, The U.S. Department of Education, The Board of Regents of Louisiana, and the John Templeton Foundation among others. He is an internationally recognized scholar and a domestic public policy specialist on such issues as higher education, bio-ethics, business ethics, affirmative action, and immigration. Professor Capaldi’s recent publications include articles on corporate social responsibility, the ethics of free market societies, and an intellectual biography of John Stuart Mill in connection with which he was recently interviewed on C-SPAN’s Booknotes.

Matthias S. Fifka is Professor for Business Administration and Business Ethics at the University Erlangen-Nuernberg. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Dallas (USA), the Nanjing University of Finance and Economics and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China), the École Supérieure des Sciences Commerciales d'Angers (ESSCA) (France), and the Maastricht School of Management (Netherlands). He serves as external evaluator at the Maastricht School of Management, Netherlands, and the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. From 2011 until September 2013 he held the Dr. Juergen Meyer Endowed Chair for International Business Ethics and Sustainability at Cologne Business School (CBS). His research and teaching focuses on issues of strategic management - especially the strategic implementation of sustainability and corporate social responsibility -, business ethics, corporate governance, international management as well as the American political and economic system. He is and has been a member of several scientific commissions and boards, e.g., for the European Union, the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, and the German Association of Environmental Management (B.A.U.M. e.v.). Moreover, since 2008, he has been serving as the deputy director of the German American Institute in Nuernberg. He also advises different types of organizations on management and CSR issues.

Liangrong Zu is a senior specialist in corporate social responsibility, business ethics, corporate restructuring and sustainable development. He has been working for the United Nations and central government for about 20 years. Currently he is a senior trainer of enterprise development, teaching and doing research at the “International Training Centre” of the “International Labour Organization” (ILO). He holds a master degree in economics of education, and obtained his PhD in business and management at “Nottingham University Business School”, specializing in corporate social responsibility, corporate governance and enterprise restructuring. He is the author of “Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Restructuring and Firm’s Performance: Empirical Evidence from China” published by Springer. He has also authored many articles published in national and international journals.

René Schmidpeter holds the Dr. Juergen Meyer Endowed Chair of International Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility at Cologne Business School (CBS). He is also a professor at the Nanjing University of Finance and Economics as well as academic head of the Centre for Humane Market Economy in Salzburg. He is a series editor for Springer’s CSR, Sustainability, Ethics and Governance books, section editor of the Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility (ECSR) and editor of the Dictionary of Corporate Social Responsibility (DCSR). His research and teaching focuses on the management of Corporate Social Responsibility, international perspectives on CSR, Social Innovation and Sustainable Entrepreneurship as well as the relationship between business and society. He has published widely and is editor of the German management series on Corporate Social Responsibility at Springer Gabler. His latest international and national publications include: Sustainable Entrepreneurship (2014), Springer, together with Ch. Weidinger and F. Fischler.

Social Innovation (2013), Springer, together with Th. Osburg

Corporate Social Responsibility (2012), Springer, together with A. Schneider.

Schmidpeter serves as an expert jury for the Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award (SEA) in Vienna and has been a member of many academic, economic and political steering committees as well as advisory boards. He has conducted research for the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the European Union, the Bavarian Ministry of Social Affairs, the Anglo-German Foundation, the Bertelsmann Foundation as well as the Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft (DFG). He works closely with chambers of commerce and businesses in Germany and Austria in order to further build up regional knowledge in the field of sustainability and CSR.

Policies and ethics