2003-11-05T12:50:00.000-08:00

This weblog was created in September 2003 for research, thoughts and discussions on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), but also as part of the course JOMC 223 Global Impact of New Communication Technologies at University of North Carolina (UNC) in Chapel Hill, USA.

My name is Lise Ladegaard, and I am an exchange student from Denmark studying at UNC for the semester. I am here to collect more information for my thesis next year on CSR which I became very interested in last summer while attending a summer course on Human Rights in Sweden. At home I study at Copenhagen Business School, and I will hopefully get my Master in International Business Communication at the beginning of 2005.

I find CSR a very interesting subject to study because it is esential for multinational companies to implement CSR in their organizations today in order to combat threats such as poverty, pollution, terrorism, hunger, and totalitarian systems. CSR is also not only in the spotlight for business leaders, but it attracts the society at large, therefore I find it very unique. Furthermore, it is interesting, because it is still a relatively unexplored research area.

The concept CSR has many definitions. Lantos (2001) summarizes the concept and defines it in this way: "CSR entails the obligation stemming from the implicit "social contract" between business and society for firms to be responsive to society's long-run needs and wants, optimizing the positive effects and minimizing the negative effects of its actions on society"

I hope that a combination of my exchanges abroad in Sweden, Australia and now in the United States, my general life experiences, and my academical background which is a BA in Business Languages in English and German with a Specialization in International Marketing and my graduate courses in Human Rights, Corporate Communication - the case of the environment, Sustainable Enterprise, and some other courses with relation to my topic qualifies me to writing an interesting weblog on CSR. At UNC all of my courses also deal with CSR in one way or the other. Furthermore, I am a strong believer in democracy, so why should I not be qualified to write about this topic although I did not have any experience with the matter? You can never know too much about CSR. It is a very complex matter, but worth investigating.

Sources

Lantos, G.P., "The boundaries of strategic corporate social responsibility", Journal of Consumer Marketing, volume 18, o. 7, pp. 595-630.

About me