Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the primary mechanism through which private businesses seek to establish their sustainability credentials (Rendtorff, 2019; Saeed et al, 2021). It is supplemented recently with environmental, social and governance investment frameworks (Pedersen et al, 2021).
McCauley, Darren
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the primary mechanism through which private businesses seek to establish their sustainability credentials (Rendtorff, 2019; Saeed et al, 2021). It is supplemented recently with environmental, social, and governance investment frameworks (Pedersen et al, 2021). The key concept within both agendas is responsibility. I recognize from the outset that the focus of this chapter is rather narrow in scope due to the word limitations of a chapter. There are other contributions in this book that demonstrate a more critical justice account that moves well beyond the rhetoric of CSR and stakeholders. Chapter 3 is an excellent example of the application of a more critical approach to responsibility (Skillington, 2023). I continue here with a focus on reflecting on and improving the CSR approach of companies through considering five key dimensions of justice: distributional, procedural, recognition, restorative, and cosmopolitan.
There is rarely a detailed reflection on what is understood by responsibility within companies reporting activities (Bou-Habib, 2019). A cursory glance at reporting activities reveals that their interpretation is soaked with theoretical and conceptual assumptions around its definition, purpose, and elasticity. This chapter is a brief attempt to strengthen the inadequacies of a responsibility focused approach undertaken by private businesses in the Arctic. It argues that responsibility, as understood by companies, is a purposely limiting effort to concentrate on environmental impacts where the Arctic region is concerned. It begins with an introduction to how scholars approach CSR in the Arctic. It will navigate through the different meanings of corporate social responsibility, indicating the ambiguity and divergence of CSR practice in the Russian and Norwegian Arctic. The chapter puts forward a new justice-based framework for CSR with a range of principles that is recommended as a direct consequence of the framework.
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JUSTNORTH
JUSTNORTH is a project designed to explore the multitude of ethical systems that coexist in the Arctic, as a starting point to assess the viability of new economic activities in the region. For the millions of people who live both inside and outside the Arctic and are affected by these economic activities, decisions are made through utilitarian ethical principles: viability of an activity is based on profitability and technical feasibility, with little regard to questions of whether it is ethically right or wrong for the impacted human populations or the environment.
Global climate change has launched intense speculation on Arctic resources. Increasing geopolitical tensions among some of the Arctic states increases the importance of respecting different value systems while finding common values to help strengthen the links between Arctic and non-Arctic entities. Significant practice and policy gaps in existing Arctic economic activities have led to development that is unsustainable.
Through understanding current practices of development in the Arctic through the lens of 18 case studies, JUSTNORTH aims to develop conceptual frameworks, indices and a negotiation tool, for reconciling multiple ethics and value systems. These will provide a cornerstone for determining the viability of economic activities in the Arctic, as well as clarify policy, legal, and regulatory pathways for implementing ethic-based decision-making principles.
Project details
- Project title: “Toward Just, Ethical and Sustainable Arctic Economies, Environments and Societies”
- Funding scheme: European Union Horizon 2020 Programme (EU H2020, Grant agreement ID: 869327)
- Duration: 3 years (1 June 2020 – 30 November 2023)
- Project coordinator: Uppsala Universitet, Dr. Corine Wood-Donnelly
- Project website: www.justnorth.eu/