Companies are increasingly expected to assist in addressing many of the world's pressing problems including climate change, poverty and HIV/Aids. According to a 2007 survey by the consultancy firm McKinsey carried out among the chief executive officers (CEOs) of companies, 95 per cent of those questioned believe that society has greater expectations than it did five years ago that companies will assume public responsibilities. More than half of the CEOs believe that these expectations will further increase significantly during the next five years (Bielak et al. 2007).

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a business approach for addressing the social and environmental impact of company activities. With increasing expectations placed on business, one needs to ask if CSR is able to fulfil these larger expectations. Therefore, the aim of this book is to analyse CSR's potential and limitations for contributing towards wider societal ‘challenges’.

The central part of the book investigates the potential of CSR for addressing three challenges in the business–society relationship: the environment, development and governance. The book suggests that CSR has some potential for dealing with environmental issues such as carbon emissions and oil spills. Yet, in general, the current CSR agenda largely fails to deal with the three challenges, and a number of important economic and political issues are not yet addressed. The book explains the existing constraints to CSR and provides some recommendations in the conclusion.

The author firmly believes that any discussion of the CSR agenda must have a solid basis in reality.