Editorial

Citation

Crowther, D. (2013), "Editorial", Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 9 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/srj.2013.36809baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Social Responsibility Journal, Volume 9, Issue 2

It is now 20 years since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, better known as the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro. The issues addressed in the conference included:

• •

  a scrutiny of patterns of production – particularly production with hazardous components or waste, such as lead in petrol, or poisonous waste from other products;

• •

  alternative sources of energy to replace fossil fuels which had already been linked to global climate change;

• •

  a reliance on public transport systems in order to reduce vehicle emissions, congestion in cities and the health problems caused by polluted air and smog; and

• •

  the growing scarcity of water as a resource in various parts of the world.

An important achievement of the conference was an agreement on the Climate Change Convention which in turn led to the Kyoto Protocol. Another was agreement to “not carry out any activities on the lands of indigenous peoples that would cause environmental degradation or that would be culturally inappropriate”. Now 20 years later it is time to examine the effects of this conference and this is what we will be doing in our conference this year.

There is considerable evidence that the field of social responsibility is changing and maturing. This can be seen from the issues which are of concern to people currently researching in the field and this is of course reflected in this and other issues of the journal. Possibly the main issues that concern people are with governance and with the supply chain. As far as the supply chain is concerned then this is reflected in a concern for the environment and for human rights and is not concentrated in the organisation but permeates the whole supply chain. This extends from the sourcing of raw materials through to customers and what concerns them. Papers in this issue reflect these concerns.

As far as governance is concerned then there is a considerable increase in interest in governance in its broader interpretation. Probably this interest has been heightened not just by the corporate scandals that we have witnessed but also by the economic and financial crisis that we have experienced. And this concern for governance is broader that corporations, extending also to the governance of markets and countries and to governance in a global economy. And governance itself has expanded its area of concern to more than just a concern with owners and investors. Now governance is – rightly – concerned with relationships between a firm and all of its stakeholders. This too is reflected in the papers in this issue.

Two other trends are also apparent. As academics we are affecting the future by what we teach to our future business and societal leaders and we want to teach the right information in the right way. We also want to equip these people with the right ethical concerns as well as with the tools to enact those concerns, hence our need to continually investigate these issues. The other trend is the continually increasing global nature of all of these concerns, and the way that this is manifest both in developed and developing countries. This too is reflected in this issue of the journal with similar concerns being addressed in a variety of countries. This too is a healthy sign that the lead in the development of the discourse of social responsibility is no longer from a few developed countries in Europe and North America. Now every country has a contribution to make and we can all learn from each other. So we can readily observe the healthy state of the discourse of social responsibility and this is a cause of optimism for the future.

In this issue we say goodbye to Professor Güler Aras as joint editor as she is stepping down due to other commitments. We thank her for her efforts and wish her well in other endeavours. Social Responsibility Journal is of course the official journal of the Social Responsibility Research Network (SRRNet) – www.socialresponsibility.biz. Producing it is one of the main activities which the Network undertakes. All papers in this issue, as in all others, 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.

David Crowther