Growth and the shouldering of social responsibility need not be mutually exclusive; in fact, they can support each other. In this context, CR is understood to mean the transparent social responsibility of companies with respect to their employees, to society as a whole, and to future generations. Major elements include sustainable development and business models, environmental compatibility such as Green ICT, social projects, and social business models. 

This social responsibility promotes employee loyalty and brand perceptions particularly strongly during an economic crisis. With this as a backdrop, we want to take a close look at the following key questions:  

• How can new business potential and new values be created through CR, especially during times of economic crisis?  

• How should a transparent CR strategy which supports corporate strategy and products and enables sustainable corporate management be defined? How can a CR strategy help to avoid repetition of past mistakes?  

• And how can the CR activities derived from this strategy be assessed and transparently traced by the use of a CR scorecard? 

Corporate responsibility complements shareholder value 

Every new worldwide economic crisis and every new stock market crash causes the Club of Rome question to pop up again: have we reached the limits of growth? There are numerous thought experiments on the future of the Western economic system ­examining the relevance of growth as the main engine driving the economic and financial cycle. However, the current economic crisis makes it crystal-clear that the “anything goes” approach to economic activities without social responsibility does not have a future – unless, of course, national economies remain willing to expend great efforts during the decade of economic upswing to reduce slowly the mountain of debt left behind by the crisis itself and recovery measures, even though only a fraction is ever paid back before the next financial bubble bursts. 

Before a new approach can be found for a solution, we must first understand the triggers and catalysts of the current economic crisis. In recent years, business has concentrated more and more on the maximization of shareholder value in the shortest ­possible time. The only performance indicator for an investment decision was the share value and the prospects for increasing it as fast as possible.