Corporate Social Responsibility in Finland: From Local Movements to Global Responsibility

Abstract

The focus of the responsibility debate in Finland has varied in time covering the three dimensions of corporate responsibility, namely economic, environmental and social responsibility. The social movement by the industrial and agrarian labor claiming for more reasonable working conditions started the series of movements in the early twentieth century. The environmental dimension dominated the debate at the time of the rise of public environmental awareness from the 1960s until the 1990s. The intensive globalization turned the focus on the global social and environmental responsibility in the late 1990s and onwards. The diversity of corporate responsibility concepts shows up within the three Finnish business types in 2000s: large-scale industries, traditional small and medium-scale enterprises and newly established innovative enterprises. A few large-scale, globally or nationally but within the international sector operating companies, face global responsibility challenges when expanding the operations to new, emerging markets, commonly with inadequate social and environmental legislations. The companies have adopted international environmental and social management systems and responsibility reporting in order to strengthen the operations, but also to concretize the responsibility of the operations for various national and global stakeholders. The advanced Finnish social and environmental regulation and legislation set a fixed and adequate framework for nationally operating small and medium-scale enterprises. The owners perceive little value-added by applying the responsibility concept in the daily business, as the operations are mainly responsible as such. The business idea of the third group, recently established start-ups, is commonly business by being responsible, guaranteeing the high societal legitimacy of such business. These actors create business by, for example, recycling various materials or offering social services. The future prospect goes more and more towards the innovation type responsible business.