Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Social Responsibility Journal, Volume 5, Issue 2

The current economic crisis is a global phenomenon, affecting people all over the world, and this shows the global nature of economic activity in the modern world. Social responsibility has of course always been a global concern but the current crisis has raised, to an even greater extent, a concern with socially responsible behavior – not just for corporations but also for governments and other organizations and for citizens as individuals. This has always been the concern of this journal – reflected in this issue just as much as in all the preceding issues. Nevertheless we welcome the raising of the profile of socially responsible activity and confidently expect that it will be a crucial part of the recovery from the economic crisis.

This journal is the official journal of the Social Responsibility Research Network (SRRNet) – www.socialresponsibility.biz. It is one of the main activities that the network undertakes. The other main activity of the network is to organize an annual conference and the 7th International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility took place in Durham, UK during 2008. Plans are currently well advanced for the 2009 conference – the 8th – which will take place in South Africa as a collaboration between the Network and the University of South Africa – and we hope to see you at this conference. Plans are also firm for the conferences over the next few years, following our plan to host alternative conferences in Europe and elsewhere. The conferences are designed to act as a forum for the debate and analysis of contemporary issues in the broad area of CSR but we also focus upon a particular issue(without excluding general issues). So in Durham the theme of the conference was concerned with SMEs and CSR and in Cape Town we will focus upon another topical issue – NGOs and CSR.

This issue of the journal features some of the papers that were presented at the conference as well as some that were just general submissions. The international dimension of the journal remains apparent with contributors from nine different countries in this issue. This reflects the importance of the topic of social responsibility to academics throughout the world as well as the general appeal and significance of the network and hence this journal. So we continue to develop and improve. If you are not already a member of the network then please consider joining – just visit our website.

The network is interdisciplinary and so too is the conference. This journal,just as the conference, is also interdisciplinary in its focus and international in its outlook – and this is reflected in the papers this volume. They cover such things as disclosure practices in Malaysia and in India; a sociological perspective on refugees in Jordan; consumer behavior in India and in China; small business in South Africa; perspectives from Finland and from Thailand and from the UK National Health Service as well as a critique of academe. All papers have however the commonality that they investigate an aspect of social responsibility – and one feature of social responsibility is that it is a very wide and very interdisciplinary field. With that we leave you to read the papers, hoping that this will inspire you to contribute to a future edition.

Güler Aras, David Crowther