Commentary: Corporate Social Responsibility: Deep Roots, Flourishing Growth, Promising Future

This commentary expands upon an article of mine: “Corporate Social Responsibility: Deep Roots, Flourishing Growth, Promising Future,” published in 2008. The main goals of my commentary are to describe two levels of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)—macro and micro—and to advocate the need to integrate the two levels into a holistic analysis of CSR (Frederick, 2008). The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility emerged in the United States at mid-twentieth century, advocated by both academic scholars and corporate executives. In 1951, Frank Abrams, chairman of the board of directors of America’s largest oil company, advocated a “harmonious balance among stockholders, employees, customers, and the public at large” which is the very core of CSR’s meaning. In 1953, a business school dean, Howard Bowen, wrote The Social Responsibilities of the Businessman, which was the first book to capture and summarize the main ideas about CSR (Frederick, 2006). From that early beginning, the idea of Corporate Social Responsibility evolved in a series of stages: