Guest Editors' Introduction: Is the Desire to Embed Corporate Social Responsibility Within Organizations at a Crossroads?

摘要

Recent major corporate disasters and scandals have placed the responsibility and accountability of corporations under ever greater scrutiny. As a result, there is an increasing call for more control of corporations and their behavior and, therefore, for more regulation of corporations to make those who "misbehave" accountable for their actions (Nakajima and Palmer 2010). International organizations, such as the United Nations and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, have led various initiatives to regulate corporations, and sovereign states around the world have adopted and signed many international agreements. This is, no doubt, a reflection of an ever-increasing realization that many multinational corporations are far wealthier and, as a result, capable of wielding greater power and influence in the global arena than many sovereign states. For example, the United Nations Confer ence on Trade and Development (2002) has ranked the world's largest multinational corporation (Exxon) in forty-fifth place among sovereign states in terms of its value added (estimated as the sum of salaries and benefits, depreciation and amortization, and pretax income with the belief that it is to be more comparable to gross domestic product [GDP] than sales) compared with the GDP of the sovereign states.