The Critical State of Corporate Social Responsibility in Europe: An Introduction

The issues of Europe and corporate social responsibility (CSR) attract significant interest and discussion at political, policy and practitioner (business) levels. Most recently the Volkswagen scandal has served to highlight the importance as well as the impotence of CSR within and beyond the EU. This edited collection of peer-reviewed chapters explores through robust, rigorous and critical analysis of the role, operation and impact of CSR in differently governed nations of the EU. It looks at how CSR is interpreted and applied to suit particular national contexts that are in broad agreement regarding the aim and objectives of the European project, as well as being in support of free markets, open democratic government and the role of the state. It teases out the points of similarity and difference in policy, politics and practice of CSR within and across European nations. It seeks to address this knowledge gap by helping to establish and demarcate a critically informed European approach to CSR as a legitimate and worthy field of study in its own right. Despite various EU policy initiatives and changes in business CSR practices, the issue of different nation states and their role in CSR remains an issue yet to be fully and properly addressed from a critical standpoint and this is something that this book seeks to achieve. CSR in policy and practice is described, explained, theorised and critically analysed. This book addresses the need to academically benchmark the role of the EU and the nation states’ role in shaping the form, direction and content of CSR so as to review understanding of how business practices might be better managed, monitored and their performance improved. It adds more in-depth understandings and insights to the existing work in the area of CSR and Europe, such as the edited books of Idowu, Schmidpeter, and Fifka (2015), Barth and Wolff (2009) and Habisch, Jonker, Wegner, and Schmidpeter (2005). It addresses and informs two separate but related issues: first, the shifting nature, shape and understanding of the CSR concept; second, it challenges, questions and progresses CSR aspects, features and elements of the broader European project.