Managing corporate social responsibility: Translating theory into business practice

Abstract

One of the challenges of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is to translate the theoretical principles of sustainable development into everyday business practice. This article describes a simple yet robust management system with a step-by-step guide to help companies integrate, sustainability thinking into their business strategy and so improve their triple bottom line. The system, which has been developed in collaboration with industry, provides a structured framework for managing CSR through identification of sustainability issues and development of action plans to address them; the use of sustainability indicators to measure performance and monitor progress; and communication of achievements to relevant stakeholders. The framework is general enough to be applicable across industry and yet it allows for specific characteristic of different businesses thus facilitating further adoption and dissemination of CSR practices. © 2003 NetLogex, LLC. All rights reserved.