Sustainability -- Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Banking Businesses

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the issue of sustainability, as it is practised by firms operating within developing economy contexts. It defines sustainable strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) and proposes a framework that outlines the stages involved in the proficient performance and disclosure of sustainable strategic CSR initiatives. This was done by adopting a firm-oriented perspective, combined with insights banking, CSR and sustainability.The proposed framework identifies four main stages involved in sustainable strategic CSR. The author outlines a framework for understanding how the company can manage the different stages of the sustainable strategic CSR process and discusses its implications. The conceptual elaboration creates new research issues that should lead to a deeper understanding of firms’ strategic motivations, choice of initiative, timing and methods of disclosure in implementing sustainable CSR. The firm-based perspective and the focus on the design, performance and disclosure of sustainable CSR, provide a new approach to analysing and understanding sustainable CSR. The paper contributes to CSR research by introducing conceptualisations of sustainable strategic CSR which have an interest for both academic research and practitioners.