CSR in the Boardroom: Contribution of the Non Executive Director (NED)

The debate on the ‘appropriate’ nature of the relationship between business and society has a long history. Philosophers of more ancient times such as Plato and Aristotle, pondered on the morality of the relationship between business and society. In recent times attention has focused on the concept of CSR (Klonoski, 1991; Greening and Gray, 1994; Wood, 1991). CSR has provoked numerous debates and definitions, some supportive and others critical. The neoclassical economists and proponents of market liberalisation and profit-maximisation (Friedman, 1962: 133; Arrow, 1997: 143) suggest that the only social responsibility of business it to ‘use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it … engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud’. In contrast, CSR advocates (Jones, 1980: 59–60; Jones et al., 2002: 21) promote the notion, ‘that corporations have an obligation to constituent groups in society other than stockholders and beyond that prescribed by law or union contract’, and furthermore, the obligation should be ‘voluntarily adopted’. Similarly, McWilliams and Siegal (2001) argue that CSR represents ‘actions that appear to further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm and that which is required by law’.