Classificació anatòmica i taxonòmica de les restes de fauna

According to Douglas et al. (2004:388), there is no single accepted definition of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR), it generally referring to ―business decision-making linked to ethical values, compliance with legal requirements, and respect for people, communities and the environment‖. The concept of corporate social responsibility has old roots that many authors have tried to elucidate. For instance, Bowman (1953), McGuire (1963), and Sethi (1975) have provided various definitions about corporate social responsibility, all of which have had as their focus, the corporation‘s obligation to be compliant with the prevailing social norms, values and expectations for legal and economic obligations. Carroll (1991) believed that corporate social responsibility (CSR) could be understood as a pyramid in which economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities are met in ascending order. Later, other studies (Carroll and Shabana, 2010; Dahlsrud, 2008; Lockett et al., 2006) formulated four popular dimensions for CSR, these being: environmental, ethical, stakeholder-related, and social. And in a more current paper by Beauchamp and O‘Connor (2012), the results of an investigation with the 280 most admired

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American companies reveal that CSR can be classified to three dimensions: economic responsibility, ethical responsibility, and community commitments.

In simple terms, CSR is concerned with managing the company‘s social performance which includes the economic, environmental, and social impacts on society, positive and negative, actual and potential (Douglas et al., 2004). Naylor (1999) links the social responsibility of the corporate with the mangers‘ obligation to achieve mutual benefits for both the organisation and society. In this respect, many such benefits have been recognised for companies and society, such as superior profitability and economic results, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, trust, good brand attitude, positive effect on firm market value, risk reduction, the value of good reputation, the competitive advantage derived from product quality and differentiation, positive effect on people, and positive effects on the natural and physical environments as well as on the social systems and institutions (e.g.;Gildea, 1995; Brown and Dacin, 1997; Drumwright, 1996; Bagozzi, 2000; Maignan and Ferrell, 2001; Murray and Vogel, 1997; Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001; Maignan and Ferrell, 2004; Tsoutsoura, 2004; Sen et al., 2006; Luo and Bhattacharya, 2006; De Schutter, 2008; Lee, 2008; Weber, 2008; Garcı´a-Castro et al., 2010; and Wood, 2010).

It is true that the concept of QM has become more sophisticated since quality gurus introduced their ideas. Quality was (and remains) linked to values like integrity, honesty, and trustworthiness, but a more recent link between it and CSR emerged when the concept of product liability came into being (James, 1996). This link has been demonstrated by many quality scholars. For instance, Waddock and Bodwell (2004) were convinced that general frameworks can manage the QM and social responsibility systematically through several practices. Similarly, José Tarί (2011) considers QM as a philosophy and set of practices for the management of an organisation, while social responsibility is also a philosophy and a set of practices for responsible management. (Jacues, 1993; Takala, 1999) believe that quality and ethics has the same meaning ‗doing the right thing right‘. Curkovic (2003) and Withanachchi et al., (2007) propose that QM practices support the development of environmental management and social responsibility. Konuse et al. (2009) declare that the commitment to quality can improve the organisation‘s performance which means handling primary ethical values. Likewise, Halici and Kucukaslan (2005), and Mijatovic and Stokic (2010) emphasise that good quality practices positively affect company behaviour in an ethical way. Fisscher and Nijhof (2005) recognise that both QM and social responsibility focus on committing an organisation to honour its responsibilities to its different

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stakeholders, and Ghobadian et al. (2007) consider the elements of QM to facilitate the elements of social responsibility. For example, people participation, delegation of authority and responsibility, and empowerment are ways to involve employees, increase the degree of communication, and consequently improve transparency. A valuable review by José Tarί (2011) has concluded similar results, suggesting that eight practices of QM (leadership, planning, people management, customer focus, supplier management, process management, information and analysis, and design) can support the development of social responsibility in the organisation. And many other empirical studies have considered that social responsibility is one of the main dimensions of QM (Al-Marri et al., 2007; Parast et al., 2006; Prasad and Shekhar, 2010 Holjevac, 2008; Sureshchandar et al., 2002). For example, a review by Talwar (2009) of 16 quality models has shown that all 16 models include social responsibility as a core value.

International quality organisations like the ISO organisation are concerned about social responsibility, resulting in the publication of the ISO 26000 standard on social responsibility. Similarly, Excellence Models such as the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) and the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Award have intensively promoted social responsibility issues. According to Aşcıgil (2007), the EFQM Excellence Model can align the organisation‘s social performance with decision-making strategies, and can integrate the three pillars of sustainability (economic, social, and environmental) into a stakeholder-based perspective of QM. In other words, it can transfer the management‘s attention from functional units to stakeholders‘ interests in the whole activity chain involving suppliers, retailers, customers, final users and other non-traditional stakeholders such as environment, government and society.

Recently, banks have become aware of the desired benefits of adopting socially- responsible developments. In this context, a group of 30 major international banks, including Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, ABN Amro, Barclays, HSBC and ING have been urged to sign the Equator Principles agreement which supports the development of social responsibility (Yeomans, 2005).

Many practices are too likely to occur in financial institutions like banks under the CSR umbrella. Gray et al. (1995) considered the social expectations of banks might include strengthening corporate governance, fighting money laundering, preventing tax evasion,

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protecting financial privacy, offering equal opportunity employment, and promoting environmental awareness.

Some other CRS strategies have been represented, specifically for particular situations, by Auger et al. (2006), Bhattacharya and Sen (2004), and McDonald and Rundle-Thiele (2008), including:

 overseas operations (no child labour, no sweat shops, support for human rights)  employee diversity (support for diversity in the workforce in regards to gender, race,

religion, disability and sexual orientation)

 employee support (safe working conditions, job security, profit-sharing, good union relations) ;

 environmental impact (reduction of water and energy consumption, carbon offset programmes, recycling and use of recyclable materials)

 product (R&D, innovation, ethical product marketing)

 community support (offering customers in low socio-economic groups fee-free accounts and low-interest loans, banks‘ support of their employees‘ volunteer activities via paid leave and flexible working arrangements).

Corporate social reporting or ‗social disclosure‘ is also one of the main expected bank practices related to good corporate governance. Gray et al. (1996) observe that the amount and nature of reporting vary according to the country and the dominant government policies. And Douglas et al. (2004) confirm that reporting the non- financial aspects is more likely to be in the developed countries rather than the developing countries. For instance, some European countries have urged their companies to disclose more environmental issues by formulating new legalisation. Adams et al. (1998) have demonstrated, by studying the corporate social reporting in Western Europe, that German companies disclose more information regarding the environment and employee issues than other companies in the UK, France, Netherlands, and Switzerland. And, in a similar study by Douglas et al. (2004) the state of corporate social reporting by Irish financial institutions in their annual reports and on company websites was compared with a sample of European financial institutions. The findings reveal that in all the Irish financial institutions there is very little corporate social reporting, and that voluntary disclosure practices are minimal. This is an issue of shareholder concern, calling for legislation.

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A more recent study by Valiente et al. (2012) has revealed two main factors affecting CSR strategies in organisations. In particular, the study found company size to be crucial in a firm‘s corporate social performance. The larger the firm, the greater the stakeholder pressure for a formal CSR strategy, whereas the CSR strategies of small firms are different and less formal as confirmed by previous studies undertaken by Perrini (2006), Spence (1999), and Spence and Rutherfoord (2003).Valiente et al. (2012) also confirm the corporate performance as the second highlighted factor. The high performance firms are more familiar with the concept of CSR than low performance firms as they form the group subject to more stakeholder pressure to adopt CSR strategies.