EXTENSION OF THE POSSIBILITY OF USE OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSABILITY INDICATORS

Abstract

The perception of a company’s responsibility towards its environment has varied over time, from a neoclassical design, purely mercantilist, up to the current concept, which is reflected in the so-called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), where economic interests have been combined with other environmental and/or socio-economic aspects, as part of the business contribution to sustainable development.Today, various prestigious international organizations (ISO, OECD, EU, etc.) provide tools to companies enabling them to evaluate and show their compromise to the development sustainably.To overcome the complexity that may involve the evaluation of sustainable development, generally, resorts to the use of indicators to obtain, in a way more or less accurate, assessment of behavior and its track over time and even comparison with other activities.However, in spite of the usefulness of these indicators, their use has been limited to enhancing business reputation, regardless other interesting possibilities that include also appropriate indicators that could be useful in decision-making, as the activity location.