In “What Is Corporate Social Responsibility?”, we included a recent evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which is what we have gathered from reading and listening to others. However, we wanted to back up and provide a more robust academic timeline. We will be diving into David Chandler’s version. Why David Chandler’s version? His textbook, “Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation,” provides a comprehensive understanding of CSR, which we have not discovered to date. Furthermore, since some of the events are too extensive, we will not be highlighting every event on Chandler’s timeline, but we will cover most! Let’s dive in! 

It’s surprising how long CSR has been around. Although the term Corporate Social Responsibility may be recent, “societies have always made demands of firms” (Chandler, 2020, p. 8). Interestingly, “Socrates declared that ‘the more [men] think of making a fortune, the less they think of virtue.’”(Chandler, 2020, p.8) Socrates’ words influenced other writings, specifically Chinese, Egyptian, and Sumerian, and each of these texts has similar perspectives that business has a responsibility to the community.