The contribution of corporate social responsibility to sustainable development

Abstract This paper considers the motivations for and nature of business contributions to sustainable development though the medium of corporate social responsibility (CSR). It compares CSR with sustainable development, given that they are both ‘essentially contested concepts’; it introduces CSR's changing meaning and it explains why there has been a recent increase in CSR with reference to the increasing socialization of markets as a result of narrow market drivers, along with other social, governmental and globalization drivers. It uses Hart's ‘A natural‐resource‐based view of the firm’ to explain the way in which these drivers give rise to sustainable development agendas in companies and provides illustration of these. The concluding discussion identifies some limitations to CSR as a vehicle for sustainable development and signals important avenues of research for policy‐makers. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.