Editorial

Citation

Aras, G. and Crowther, D. (2010), "Editorial", Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 6 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/srj.2010.36806baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Social Responsibility Journal, Volume 6, Issue 2

The economic problems of the world, stemming from the financial crisis of 2007 continue to exist and continue to affect every country in the world – a continuing reminder of the global environment in which we live. Much has been written about these economic problems while much more remains to be written but we see in this issue some papers that have a bearing on this. Interestingly enough these papers are concerned with the historical antecedents as a means for understanding the present. This too is a theme in the paper about social and environmental accounting in this issue. Stakeholders and the relationship between them and companies continues to be an important aspect of social responsibility and many of the papers reflect this in their investigations. Equally SMEs are recognized to be of growing importance and there are papers reflecting this also in this issue.

This journal is the official journal of the Social Responsibility Research Network (SRRNet) – www.socialresponsibility.biz – a network of scholars interested in various aspects of social responsibility. Currently there are over 500 members of the network and this number is continuing to increase. Members hail from all over the world reflecting the commonality of concern for the subject matter that is truly global. Equally global is the range of authors who contribute to the journal and this issue is no exception – a reflection of the fact that it is not only crises that have a global impact. So too does a concern with social responsibility.

Publishing the journal is one of the main activities that the network undertakes. The other main activity of the network is to organize an annual conference and as this issue is published the 9th International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility will be taking 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) at each conference. So in Zagreb we will focusing upon the question of governance and CSR, an important issue highlighted during the current economic crisis. And we can expect to see some of the contributions to the conference appearing in the journal in due course, just as we have already see papers from previous conferences appearing in issues of the journal – including this issue.

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. What is apparent however 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 issue.

Güler Aras, David Crowther