Corporate social responsibility refers to the voluntary consideration by companies of social and ethical issues in their activities. The activities of companies are therefore understood in the broadest sense: economic activities, internal interactions (employees, managers, shareholders) and external interactions (suppliers, customers, supervisory authorities and public authorities).

The challenge of CSR initially stems from the demands of civil society (religious, ecological, humanitarian or solidarity associations) to take better account of the environmental and social impacts of companies’ activities, which was born, in particular, of the global environmental problems encountered since the 1970s.

CSR is also inspired by the “think globally, act locally” philosophy. This means integrating the global and local context into strategic thinking on sustainable development.

CSR is therefore often understood as the implementation, in a company or third party institution, of the concepts of sustainable development, which integrate the three environmental, social and economic pillars. It was on the agenda of the Johannesburg Earth Summit in 2002, in which large companies from the environmental and energy sectors participated.

CSR also tends to redefine the responsibilities, in other words, the duties of companies towards their stakeholders: beyond the controversies on this notion of “stakeholder”, the issue, very present in the ISO 26000 standard, is notably to organize the duties of the company towards people or groups who cannot assert contracts (salary, commercial) or regulations to assert their demand towards a company.