The main ideas underlying the 4 pillars of Corporate Social Responsibility

The notion of "the 4 pillars of corporate social responsibility (CSR) Mostostovicz et al. (2011) are summarized as follows:

1. Psychological forces can lead to ineffectual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) solutions:
• Failure to assign responsibility for broad outcomes leads to moral myopia
• Moral hypocrisy: a person cites moral arguments without willingness to invest in the consequences of those arguments
2. The 4 pillars (dynamic and aspirational qualities) of CSR:
• The 4 pillars:
• Leadership: the ability to choose freely withoug being influenced byy external social forces
• Ethics: we can only  strive toward a true ethical position by gaining better insight into the origin of our ethical behaviors dynamically over time; pay attention to deep personal virtues.
• Trust: it allows for actions that otherwise would not be possible; if the trustee is trustworthy, the trustor will be better off; trust involves a voluntary transfer of assets without an explicit reciprocal commitment of the trustee; a time lag exists between the act of entrusting and the result of that behavior.
• Personal responsibility
• CSR should grow out of personal commitment and dedication.

References

1. Mostovicz, E.I., Kakabadse, A. and Kakabdadse, N.K. (2011) "Academic paper: the four pillars of corporate responsibility: ethics, leadership, personal responsibility and trust" Corporate Governance Vol. 11 (4) pp. 489-500.
2. What is CSR (video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJMpw1ebVos&feature=related
3. CSR makes competitive sense (video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njef36RhR_g