Editorial

Citation

Aras, G. and Crowther, D. (2009), "Editorial", Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 5 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/srj.2009.36805daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Social Responsibility Journal, Volume 5, Issue 4

Many words have been written about the current economic crisis since it first unfolded during 2008 and rapidly spread around the world, thereby showing just how inter-connected we all are in this global environment. The readers of this journal are of course very aware that they are part of a global community whose concern is the understanding and development of socially responsible behaviour throughout the world. It is a large community of scholars: indeed it is so large and so many people wish to contribute that starting in this year we have expanded the size of the journal so that we can accommodate more papers in each issue. This has become necessary to prevent our waiting list of accepted papers becoming too lengthy.

This journal is the official journal of the Social Responsibility Research Network (SRRNet) – www.socialresponsibility.biz. It is one of the main activities which the Network undertakes. The other main activity of the Network is to organise an annual conference and as this issue is published we will be making our preparations for the 9th International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility will take place in Zagreb, Croatia as a collaboration between the Network and the Zagreb School of Economics and Management. Plans are also firm for the conferences over the next few years, following our plan to host alternative conferences in Europe and elsewhere – and we hope to see you at one of these future conferences. 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 Cape Town the theme of the conference was concerned with NGOs and CSR while in Zagreb in 2010 we will focus upon the question of governance and CSR, an important issue highlighted during the current economic crisis.

The international dimension of the journal remains apparent in this issue, not just as far as topics are concerned but also as far as contributors also are concerned, with contributors from nine different countries in four continents in this issue. This reflects the importance of the topic of social responsibility to academics throughout the world as well as the general appeal and significance of the Network and hence this journal. So we continue to develop and improve. If you are not already a member of the Network then please consider joining – just visit our website.

The Network is interdisciplinary and so too is the conference. This journal, just as the conference, is also interdisciplinary in its focus and international in its outlook – and this is reflected in the papers this volume. It is perhaps not surprising in the current economic climate that ethics has become an important topic for research and several papers address this. Several papers also address the relationship between an organisation – either commercial or governmental – and its stakeholders, a perennial cause for concern. What is apparent is the commonality of concern as different papers from different parts of the world address similar issues and concerns – reflecting the global nature of our concerns and our research. All papers have 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