CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY: TOWARDS CAPITALISM SELF-REGULATION?

Diffusion of corporate social responsibility practices in the capitalist countries seems to set a new phenomenon of capitalism self-regulation, which in the presence of obvious and irreversible damage to society and natural environment resulting from pursuit of profit, would finally willing to rationalize the use of productive resources with the more or less explicit goal of limiting its destructive effects and thereby to preserve the material and social foundations of market economy. Corporate social responsibility would then appear to be a component of the new paradigm of economic, social, and ecological sustainability. However, the current crisis of global capitalism conditions the progress and consolidation of this phenomenon, particularly in underdeveloped capitalist countries and in the so-called "emerging economies".