Abstract
Commonly, the matter of corporate social responsibility has been applied, as the name suggests, to corporations alone. The issues, however, apply equally to all organisations including those of the public sector. This chapter looks at some of the important issues in terms of Brundtland and subsequent actions and initiatives. It also looks at the matter of sustainability to conclude that the issues are subsumed within a concern for social responsibility. In doing so, it argues that this is all related to good governance and therefore the chapter sets the scene for the remainder of the book.
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Notes
- 1.
ISO26000 is concerned with social responsibility and therefore indirectly with sustainability. It is, however, only advisory rather than a true standard. Actually, the definition of sustainability has not yet been agreed upon (see Aras & Crowther, 2009) and so no standard can be forthcoming.
- 2.
In 2012 this was repeated but with lower success and lower prominence.
- 3.
This agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, is arranged in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Countries, which have joined in this agreement, are committed to lower carbon dioxide emissions and five more greenhouse gases, alternatively if they keep their emission levels or do not lower their emissions they get involved in what is called emission trading. The protocol was adopted in 1997 and ran from 2008 until 2012. To date, the USA has not signed the protocol and Canada withdrew in 2012. It was succeeded by the Doha Amendment that has not currently been ratified by enough countries to make it an international requirement and so the future of the Protocol seems uncertain. Subsequently the Paris Agreement is current.
- 4.
22nd April 2016.
- 5.
In other words emissions caused by human activity.
- 6.
Although these costs are considered as the costs of operation of a company and so are included in the accounting but traditional accounting is unable to thoroughly recognize all the benefits and costs due to these actions. Social and environmental accounting, as exemplified through Triple Bottom Line reporting includes these effects—see Aras and Crowther (2009).
- 7.
The idea has been promoted over a hundred years earlier by philosophers, like Robert Owen (1816).
- 8.
- 9.
Or when a species of an animal or a plant gets extinct it is not anymore possible to gain the benefits from that. At the moment, lots of medications are manufactured using fauna and flora that are yet to be discovered. Therefore, it might become crucial in future.
- 10.
At the present time, this has become very manifest in the dramatic changes in the price of oil, firstly as a dramatic rise in price and subsequently by an equally dramatic fall in price as fracking becomes common place and Iran rejoins the world economy, and the consequences for the world economy.
- 11.
Sustainability requires R&D and technological development—and there is often a simple but comfortable assumption that this will enable our descendants to solve the problems which we are causing in the present!
- 12.
Cynically, it might be considered that it might have happened as many researchers are not skillful enough to carry out thorough financial analysis even though they understand its importance.
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Seifi, S., Crowther, D. (2020). The Developing Public Sector Perspective. In: Crowther, D., Seifi, S. (eds) CSR and Sustainability in the Public Sector. Approaches to Global Sustainability, Markets, and Governance. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6366-9_1
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