Literature Review of Management System Frameworks for CSR and Other Sustainability Concepts

This paper presents an overview and analysis of plan-do-check-act (PDCA) based management system frameworks and other similar structured frameworks that were developed for the systematic implementation and management of corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate sustainability (CS) and sustainable development (SD). With the aim of providing a comprehensive insight to support future research on this topic, this paper focuses on uncovering the different systematic approaches that can be adopted for the implementation and management of these stakeholder concepts at the organizational level. Our extensive literature search for articles that were published between 2000 to 2017 was able to identify only nineteen relevant articles, which indicates that there is very limited research in this field of work. Our analysis of the frameworks revealed that diverse approaches were developed for CSR. Apart from the traditional management system approach that are based on ISO 9001 (quality management standard) or ISO 14001 (environmental management standard), a variety of other approaches such as frameworks that are built on ISO 26000 (social responsibility guidance standard), organizational change management theories as well as other concepts that are similar to the PDCA cycle were developed for CSR. In contrast to the approaches for CSR, the frameworks that were developed for the implementation and management of CS or SD are mainly based on ISO 14001.