Corporate social responsibility between public policy and enterprise policy

Abstract

In spite of – or maybe precisely because of – its inherent vagueness, ambiguity and multidimensionality, CSR has increasingly come into vogue with the EU institutions, national governments and numerous European companies. This article identifies four types of CSR approaches: (1) CSR between business and society (e.g. the US approach); (2) CSR in business (e.g. HRM within firms); (3) CSR between business and government (e.g. the European Commission's approach) and (4) CSR between employment policy and business (e.g. the Danish approach). Denmark, which provides the case study of the article, typifies an approach to CSR in which the government and social partners have played an active role in promoting CSR and where initiatives have focused narrowly on employers’ responsibilities for the recruitment, training, development and dismissal of labour. The Danish case thus allows for a discussion of the role of public authorities and social partners in CSR, a discussion often neglected in mainstream CSR literature. The main question addressed in the article is how links can be created between policy instruments and business interests in order to reduce workplace exclusion and promote the labour market integration of the unemployed and inactive. We propose a framework that transcends the dichotomy between voluntarism and coercion that characterises much of the CSR discussion by suggesting different, but complementary, roles of public authorities and social partners in CSR.