Read more
The report named 'Our Common Future' submitted to the United Nations by the World Commission on Environment and Development (also known as Brundtland Report, 1987) has raised the issue of Sustainability and invoked its Principle which would seek to 'develop a future that is more prosperous, more just and more secure'. This promulgation has impacted considerably on the global business community to a large extent UNGC, UNSDGs, GRI, ISO 26000). The idea of 'sustainability' is, however, not a new one. It was in the year 1713 that the issue of 'sustainability' was first raised explicitly by Hans Carl Von Carlowitz (as mentioned in Edinger & Kaul, 2003). The idea of 'triple bottom line' (economic prosperity, environmental quality and social justice) also has its root in the writing of Von Carlowitz (Edinger & Kaul, 2003). Consequently, threats in respect of 'sustainability' were raised by the eminent researchers namely Thomas R. Malthus (Malthus, 1998[1798]), John Stuart Mill (Mill, 1923[1848]) and Meadows et. al. (1972). However, sustainable principles in modern terms are for the first time spelt out in the form of 'sustainable society' by World Council of Churches at a conference on 'Science and Technology for Human Development' in the year 1974 (Dresner,2002). The idea of 'socially responsible business' in the form a formal and operational model has been first clearly put forward by Dahrendorf (1959). All subsequent variations in the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) namely, corporate citizenship, responsible business etc. have drawn to a large extent from this model (Leisinger, 2007).
