CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: BETWEEN MEANING AND MEANINGLESS

Abstract

As a rich expression of meanings and uses, the work reveals the meanings of Corporate Social Responsibility. The text presents, under the ballast of bibliographic review and the logical-inductive method, the historical sequence of meaning of the term and culminates in the exposition of conceptual model of management that combines economic and social aspects, with respect for human rights, and that has the environment as an imperative of responsibility. It exposes the eventual emergence in the step of a binding international document, in order to avoid a gravitating reputational label that can be coined as blue, green or other washings. The first result of the research is that companies today do not fulfill their social function merely by generating profits, and that, as a second result, it is necessary that corporate management derives its social license to create wealth and pursue economic policies and practices that promote the sustainable development of society. In conclusion, it should be noted that the concepts attributed to Corporate Social Responsibility are incomplete duo to variation in the meaning of the expression over time and that its parameters are still only ethical, since they lack other, legal, parameters that companies must comply with.