The chapter argues that socially responsible investment (SRI) can be linked to long-term financial success and therefore should be part of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy of investors. It shows how capital providers, including ordinary shareholders, institutional investors and socially responsible investors, can provide the stimulus for improvements in CSR standards and performance. The chapter traces the origins of SRI and investigates the range of powers and responsibilities, procedures and opportunities that can be applied to encourage a greater degree of participation of different kinds of investor, particularly institutional investors, in SRI.

This chapter introduces the book and its inspiration, mission, central research questions and structure. It links the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to better understanding of its interdependent relationship with law, regulation and governance. The chapter shows that the book is unconstrained by conventional understandings and the neo-liberal voluntarism orthodoxy of some disciplines in suggesting opportunities for tackling substantive and procedural barriers for CSR in public international law, private international law and national law. It underlines the need for contextualism and a spectrum for possible legal and regulatory intermediation in fifteen ingredients of CSR.

The concluding chapter contextualises the book within some problematic questions on business and social responsibility, particularly from multijurisdictional and globalisation perspectives. It traces the origin and evolution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and explains the emergence and role of law, regulation, governance and policy as an antithesis to the fundamental voluntary and market-based notion of CSR. The chapter notes that there are unexplored questions even though CSR and regulation have met particularly through smart-mix or smart-regulation discourse.

This chapter underlines the need for contextualism in showing that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are more suited than multinational enterprises for wider corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and impacts in developing and emerging markets. While highlighting institutional conditions for enabling socially responsible practices by firms, it is argued that an appropriate regulatory environment is necessary to enhance the potential of SMEs.

The chapter considers the concept of regulation and a range of regulatory and non-regulatory options, including market and non-market mechanisms that governments have used and can use to advance corporate social responsibility (CSR). It recommends a six-step model for developing a CSR policy framework for governments of developing and emerging countries. The chapter therefore reiterates a more nuanced approach to regulation of CSR than the voluntarism orthodoxy acknowledges.

The chapter acknowledges a broad consensus following the recession of 2008 that ethically challenging practices have permeated the world of today’s businesses. Not only are the developing and emerging economies suffering from unethical corporate practices, they are also plagued by poor leadership. They also note that, in many cases, business leaders and entrepreneurs fail to understand their discretionary responsibilities to care for the ecosystem on which lives and businesses depend in enjoying the fruits of the free market and taking advantage of weak governance mechanisms and poor leadership, especially in the developing and emerging economies. The authors argue that the tenets of sustainability, which emphasizes the purpose of business as economic advancement coupled with concerns for socio-environmental well-being, offers some direction towards filling the ethical gap in management education to ensure sustainable development in the emerging economies. The chapter therefore examines how sustainability education can be more deliberately advanced in business and management education institutions in the emerging and developing countries.

Several sources of today’s pressure on managers operating in developing and emerging economies (DEEs) are arguably more associated with social issues than profit-making concerns. Managers are thus faced with understanding and embedding solutions to societal challenges in their core business strategies in order to be sustainable. Consequently, solutions that go beyond the traditional focus of the CSR discourse on philanthropy in DEMs have become much more imperative as companies strive to use CSR to re-engineer their value chain. As lack of adequate human skills remains a major problem to firms and society, the existing challenges of human capital in many DEMs present businesses (both small and big firms) with the opportunity to use CSR to increase the knowledge, skills and abilities of both their workforce and the society in general. A firm that is able to invest in human capital development across the entire spectrum of its several stakeholders is more likely to achieve a higher competitive advantage and sustainable growth. In this chapter, we present case studies of two different approaches to using CSR as a tool for human capital development in Africa and given the success of the companies, it is recommended that firms operating in DEMs should place emphasis on developing and utilizing CSR policies and strategies for human capital development.