Corporate Social Responsibility (csr) as a Model of “extended” Corporate Governance. an Explanation Based on the Economic Theories of Social Contract, Reputation and Reciprocal Conformism

1. CSR: Much disorder under the sun For a long time corporate ethical and social responsibility has been a subject of analysis and concern for highly active and committed but not exactly majority groups of business ethics scholars, NGO's activists, and firms with forward-looking managers. Mo re recently, on the contrary, it seems that there is no trade or business association, local or national public authority, firm or university throughout Europe giving up the opportunity of organizing a conference or a meeting on the theme. Since the end of the last century, a variety of initiatives throughout Europe 1 and the US 2 have sought to formulate standards for management systems devoted to implementing corporate social responsibility (henceforth CSR) within corporations. These are initiatives which have sprung from joint projects amongst research centres and universities, business firms and the professions; and they involve cooperatives, non-governmental and ♦ I gratefully acknowledge the support obtained under the UE research project " developing a CSR framework to integrate Q-RES and other social and ethical standards ". 1 By way of example, in the UK the Accountability 1000 standard for ethical and social audit and reporting has been developed, followed by the Sigma Project supported by the Blair government. A Values Management System has been developed in Germany at the University of Konstanz (Wieland 2003), while CSR standards modelled on the example of quality management systems have been proposed by independent bodies of standardization in Spain (Aenor) and France (Afnor). 2 In 2000 the US Ethics Officer Association submitted to the US ISO Committee (BCMS) a proposal for starting the setting of a new standard for corporate ethics and social responsibility (see Wieland 2003).