What is CSR?

CO3’s discussions with potential clients in our earlier days often featured two questions. The first was generally: “what do you do?”. This was usually followed by: “what is CSR or corporate social responsibility?”.

These days our response to the first question (CO3 is a management consultancy), seems to satisfy nearly everyone. Similarly, most organisations we advise or potentially advise seem to have some sort of understanding about what the term CSR means. However, we believe that a certain level of confusion still reigns in many quarters. This is because there has been a general failure of practitioners and their stakeholders to agree on a concise and coherent definition.

We have therefore included our own interpretation below and should welcome your feedback. We hope that our effort assists in moving this debate towards a conclusion.

“Corporate social responsibility or CSR refers to a series of business concepts that are generally understood to be important to the short, medium and long term success of a business or organisation. In particular, it refers to the responsible and effective management of the environmental, health and safety and social aspects of the organisation’s activities.”