Corporate Social Responsibility and Embedded Sustainable Business Practices

In this chapter, the author introduces Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a key driver of business; both in terms of delivering a social good and also in terms of wealth creation. In other words, doing good for society is good for business. The author emphasises that while issues of food security and the production of nutritionally sound food are a common thread overall in this book, CSR has a broader business focus as part of the machinery of producing many economy-wide goods and services for the benefit of a broad range of stakeholders. The need for businesses to produce nutritionally sound food (and its wider implications for food security) is but one element served by businesses in a CSR context. While the aspect of food production is used for the purpose of providing some examples, readers are reminded of this important distinction as the role of business is explained in this chapter.