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Corporate Social Resposiblity and Sustainable Development of SIDS

There is a growing consensus that during the period of neoliberalism too much was claimed by the market, too much was deregulated by governments. Corporations were pursuing only profit are not sustainable (Bakan, 2004). There is this paradigm shift that corporations should pursue the triple bottom-line: people, planet and profit. A company that can do this, is a green or wise company, which can be identified by its practice of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (Goede, 2011). CSR has been around as long as the corporation. The corporation always had a moral obligation to society. This was not always aknowledged. For example, in 1919 Ford Motors was ordered by the court to pay the maximum dividend to its shareholders, the Dodge brothers. Henry Ford wanted to use part of the profit to serve society. In 1999 Ford’s great-grandson did get the approval of shareholders and other stakeholders to serve the society (Moura-Leite & Padgett, 2011). But CRS is more than neoliberal corporations adopting CSR as part of their corporate strategy. It should be a true conviction that corporations should serve society.

“Companies must take the lead in bringing business and society back together. The recognition is there among sophisticated business and thought leaders, and promising elements of a new model are emerging. Yet we still lack an overall framework for guiding these efforts, and most companies remain stuck in a ‘social responsibility’ mind-set in which societal issues are at the periphery, not the core.” (Porter et al., 2011)

Some propose mandatory Social Reporting, according to the standards set by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), as part of the New Governance framework, in which companies report to stakeholders and engage in a dialogue on CRS and sustainable development (Hess, 2008 ).

In Curacao there is no real CSR.  But the work of Fundashon Bon Inteshon is commendable.

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