The story of corporate social responsibility in the 1990s takes place on two fronts, at home and abroad, as US-based multinational corporations extended their businesses internationally. On the domestic front, social responsibility became more deeply institutionalized as companies continued to integrate social considerations and requirements into their strategies, policies, and operations. During this period, responsibility became further normalized, systematized, standardized, and assimilated into the everyday functioning of business enterprises.

At the same time, corporate social responsibility was exported abroad as global capitalism expanded rapidly during the decade. The challenge for corporate managers was to identify and respond to social issues abroad by applying both accepted and novel practices and policies that would meet the needs of host countries, which were increasingly interested in some of the same social issues that businesses were facing in the United States. With the increasingly global nature of business competition in the 1990s, reputational risk increased dramatically. The new global visibility, and vulnerability of companies’ international images and brand reputations, gave them a strong incentive to carefully plan responsibility and ethics initiatives around the world. Multinational companies became responsible, not only for their behavior on the ground in foreign countries, but also for verifying and ensuring responsible practices (fair labor practices, health and safety issues, and more) all along their supply chains located abroad. The questions to whom, for what and how to be socially responsible required new answers and took on new dimensions.