Leveraging CIO Expertise to Create Social Value: Novartis' SMS for Life Initiative

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has evolved in both theory and practice over the past 60 years.3 In the 1980s, Peter Drucker referred not only to the compatibility between profitability and social responsibility, but also to the idea that a corporation ought to convert its social responsibilities into business opportunities.4 In the 1990s, CSR evolved into corporate citizenship and embraced not only economic and legal obligations, but also ethical and philanthropic responsibilities to employees, customers and the communities that the company served. During the last decade, CSR has also been linked to corporate sustainability, which emphasizes long-term sustainability that goes beyond environmental and “green” responsibilities. Corporate sustainability embraces social sustainability by contributing to the lives of people in the communities that a company serves worldwide.5