Editorial

Citation

Aras, G. and Crowther, D. (2008), "Editorial", Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 4 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/srj.2008.36804daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Social Responsibility Journal, Volume 4, Issue 4

This issue completes the fourth year of existence of the journal. It that time we have published around 150 papers with the authors coming from over 30 countries. In fact on average there have been contributors from 6 or 7 countries in each issue of the journal. This shows that Social Responsibility Journal is truly international, reflecting the international interest in the topics covered by the journal.

Over this four year period the journal has established itself as the foremost journal in the area of ethics and social responsibility – hence the international appeal demonstrated through the papers published. As a part of the establishing of the journal we have enhanced the indexing and abstracting aspects. This has of course increased the popularity of the journal and this has been reflected in the number of papers submitted. The number of papers published of course remains the same and so the consequences are obvious to all. It is becoming more difficult to have a paper published in the journal and the time between acceptance and publication is extending. This is an inevitable, albeit undesirable, consequence of the success of the journal. We will do our best of course to keep this period as short as possible.

Social Responsibility Journal is of course the official journal of the Social Responsibility Research Network – a network of scholars worldwide who share similar interests regarding research, scholarship and engagement. In many ways the Network acts as a means of dissemination of information – both through its website and through is Newsletter. Currently the membership of the Network exceeds 400 and members come from over 50 countries around the world. Many of you will know this and will already be a member. But if you are not already a member then you are also invited to join the Network. Full details can be found at www.socialresponsibility.biz.

The other main activity of the Network is to organise an annual conference and the 7th International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility has recently taken place in Durham, UK during 2008. Plans are currently in place for the 2009 conference – the 8th – which will take place in South Africa as a collaboration between the Network and the University of Pretoria – and we hope to see you at this conference. Plans are also firm for the conferences over the next few years, following our plan to host alternative conferences in Europe and elsewhere. The conferences are designed to act as a forum for the debate and analysis of contemporary issues in the broad area of CSR but we also focus upon a particular issue (without excluding general issues). So in Durham the theme of the conference was concerned with SMEs and CSR and in Pretoria we will focus upon another topical issue – NGOs and CSR.

The journal, just as the conference, is interdisciplinary in its focus and international in its outlook – and this is reflected in the papers this volume. They cover such things as disclosure practices in Ethiopia and in Malaysia; leadership characteristics; responses to illegal immigration in the USA; and CSR in Nigeria. All papers have however the commonality that they investigate an aspect of social responsibility – and one feature of social responsibility is that it is a very wide and very interdisciplinary field. With that we leave you to read the papers, hoping that this will inspire you to contribute to a future edition.

Güler Aras, David Crowther