Corporate social responsibility – an implementation guide

Abstract

The paper presents authors’ experience in implementing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and aligning it to company sustainable strategy. It starts with a formal commitment expressed by the Company’s top management and the nomination of a CSR Team, continues with the elaboration of a CSR Policy, the identification and engagement of stakeholders, the evaluation (by using a multiple criteria decision making matrix) of the most relevant CSR strategic directions that could affect the Company, the structuring of tactical measures (greening technologies, investing in social projects, zero-corruption, work with stakeholders in CSR projects, spread CSR along the value-chain, corporate governance, etc.), action plans, resource allocation, setting up responsibilities, the set up of a CSR plus a synthetic metrics, reporting / monitoring procedures. CSR is integrated in the Company’s sustainable strategy (using a specially developed alternative of the Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard). The paper presents the main steps of the implementing procedure, showing that CSR, environmental, quality and health and safety management systems work together to contribute to a better visibility and business success.