Corporate Social Responsibility with Specific Reference to Environment

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the continuing commitment of companies to behave ethically and to contribute towards economic development while fulfilling economic, social and environmental responsibilities towards the stakeholders. However, the escalating number of instances where environmental pollution and public nuisance is caused through company activities throws a question mark before their CSR policies in relation to the environment. This paper is based on the findings of a research conducted on analysing the extent to which the responsibilities towards environment envisaged in the concept of corporate social responsibility have been dealt with by the corporate sector in Sri Lanka. Data collection was done through literature survey and meetings and interviews with company officials and experts on the subject. For comparative purposes, international examples from Denmark and Australia were taken into account. It was found out that though only a limited number of companies have focused on their corporate social responsibility towards a clean environment, most of the companies have ignored it, in the Sri Lankan context mainly due to inadequate compliance with environmental regulations, absence of a state policy and legal provisions on CSR, lack of encouragement and research on CSR and not integrating environmental CSR into the core business activities. The study mainly recommends the Introduction of a state policy on CSR which includes CSR on Environment and introduction of an action plan for the implementation of this policy to address the issues identified while making state entities also responsible for the society and environment as same as the private sector, in order to improve the compliance with environmental CSR in Sri Lanka.