Corporate and State Social Responsibility: A Long-Term Perspective

Abstract

Companies have caught the changes in consumer perceptions and have developed corporate social responsibility (CSR) as long run survival strategy. CSR signals that companies are overcoming the logic of the short term. The question is whether an evolution towards something similar that we call state social responsibility (SSR) is possible. State social responsibility is exerted when the State, in absence (or in case of ineffectiveness) of a formal supranational law, protects the rights of current and future generations of its citizens and citizens of other states and/or raises the current generations' awareness regarding the opportunities for reduction generated in space and time by meta-externalities. States would signal the tendency to overcome their short-sighted logic if the meta-externalities became a crucial question in their agenda.