Corporate responsibility (CR) is an organisation’s recognition of the impact of its operating activities on society and the environment, generally backed by a commitment to minimise any negative effects and maximise the positive impact.
The underlying principle of CR relates to the way an organisation does business, including all aspects of corporate governance, to ensure that employers are operating responsibly and in an accountable and transparent way. A responsible organisation conducts business ethically and takes account of its impact economically, socially, environmentally and in terms of human rights.
While precise definitions of CR vary – and the term is often used almost interchangeably with other terminology such as sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) or sustainable business – the underlying ethos of all these concepts is that a business that damages the societal, economic and environmental systems on which it depends will ultimately be unsustainable.
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