One of the fundamental difficulties of producing a world-wide jurisdictional comparison book on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is to define exactly what it means. At one level this relatively-new business expression may be thought of as a certain minimum behavioural standard, not necessarily imposed by regulation, but nonetheless a standard to which well-run companies are expected to aspire. On the other hand, it could be said that the objective of any company is run its business according to the law in a way that maximises profits for its stakeholders. In the latter case, it is often argued that management has no business giving shareholders’ money to ‘worthy causes’: the private search for profit of itself advances the public interest, realistically leaving no need, nor basis, for the board of a company to do more.
What has emerged in this arguably the first international collection of legal opinions on the subject is, in a way, neither point of view. Readers will discover that, in many jurisdictions, the extent to which the public expects multi-national corporations to behave is, in fact, already regulated. Yet at the outset, myself as editor in chief, the co-editors and contributors made a deliberate attempt to encapsulate a very broad range of different cultures. We all believed that the results would be strikingly different. Now it is clear that indeed there are common standards to which multi-national companies are expected to adhere, and that the public’s perception of proper behaviour is relatively uniform.
But general counsel and other interested parties reading this inaugural volume should bear in mind the caveat emptor that lack of regulation in some jurisdictions does not mean a lack of buy-in to the concept in others. Quite simply put, this means that the regulatory process is not as advanced in some countries as others. Even in the countries where regulation is in place we have taken our legal opinions up to, and not beyond, 1 March 2005.
Whether there should be regulation, of course, is a separate matter. Disciples of the widely-published ethical thinkers J S Mill and H L A Hart would say that regulators should not interfere in this territory at all. Their view was that it was not the role of the legislators to enforce conventional morality. On this basis, there should be no law relating to CSR. As will be seen, their view seems to have little current application. Furthermore sceptics will no doubt continue to argue that it is very easy to play fast and loose with other people’s money and that all a company needs to do to fulfil its social objectives is to carry out its business in the normal way in accordance with the law.
This seems to me to be an outdated approach. As this publication shows, there is now a wealth of regulation dealing with topics that might reasonably be considered to be within the ambit of corporate social responsibility. Regulation might well be behind people’s expectations of how companies should behave in some jurisdictions, but expectations do not lead by much. It will be interesting to see, in future editions of this publication, how people’s expectations, and, accordingly, how regulations, have moved on.
Finally, I offer sincere thanks to Ramon Mullerat and Elizabeth Wall for their role in helping compile the book and offering their wisdom in this new area of law and regulation. Thanks also go to our contributing authors and the staff of the The European Lawyer Ltd.
