CSR Pyramid

The issue of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been debated for decades. The theory behind the concept of CSR is that business organizations have responsibilities to society that extend beyond simply producing goods and services for a profit. Major questions that have driven the debate over this issue have been that of what CSR really means, what those responsibilities are, and how far businesses are expected to go. Though dozens of definitions of CSR have surfaced over the years, an accepted conceptual model of CSR that has become a standard part of management theory is the pyramid of corporate social responsibility. The pyramid of CSR was set forth by Archie B. Carroll in 1991 based on a definitional construct of CSR introduced in 1979. The pyramid was created as a useful way of graphically depicting the four-part definition of CSR by envisioning it as embracing four levels or [Page 170]layers within a pyramidal framework. The four social responsibilities of business were contended to be economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary or philanthropic. The responsibilities were layered from the most fundamental expectation of business profitability at the base of the pyramid extending upward to the most discretionary responsibility at the apex of the pyramid. The CSR pyramid has been relevant to general management theory in that it has posited that businesses have responsibilities to a range of stakeholders other than owners. Other societal stakeholders affected, especially by the legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities, include employees, customers, environment, communities, competitors, and others. In this entry, the fundamentals of the pyramid of CSR are described. This section includes an explanation of the pyramidal metaphor and a brief description of the four types of social responsibility that are depicted in the pyramid. Next is a section on the importance of the pyramid to managers. In this section, it is clarified how the pyramid helps managers to integrate economic concerns into a social performance framework and situate legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities into a coherent structure.