Will Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) continue to be ignored as businesses try to get out of the economic crisis?

Corporate social responsibility is an important feature of the business environment. It involves the commitment that businesses make in order to improve the local community, the quality of their workforce and behave ethically However, the definition of Corporate Social Responsibility can be argued because it has changed over the centuries. A challenging view of Corporate Social Responsibility was expressed by Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He argued that businesses had a responsibility to tackle global problems such as poverty reduction, and not just a responsibility towards their local communities (Harrison, 2010). Simply put, Corporate Social Responsibility is when a firm creates an overall positive impact on society. This essay will look at whether Corporate Social Responsibility will continue to be ignored as businesses try to get out of the economic crisis.
Businesses must be able to balance between acting ethically which means not acting for profit, and so doing what is right and fair. As well as acting Economically which means earning profits. Many people would question, what has Corporate Social Responsibility got to do with investment strategies and will it become another victim of the banking crash. Banks such as Northern Rock, Halifax and Lloyds all had outstanding community based involvement and each one of them was greatly involved in some of the most reckless business behaviour in the history of capitalism (Porritt, 2008). This means that banks had behaved reckless which led to a fall in profits and this could possibly therefore lead to the feature Corporate Social Responsibility being ignored.
At an IED Conference many of the participants felt the term Corporate Social Responsibility could very well be dead by 2015. One example to support this is the situation in Eastern Europe. Studies by church bodies show that since the fall of the berlin wall there has been little progress with Corporate Social Responsibility in the Eastern Europe and that it is hardly known in the region. Czech based organisations and the