Glass and concrete define office boundaries, but CSR permeates everywhere.

CSR stands for Corporate Social Responsibility. CSR (also known as 'CR') was developed as a concept in the 1980s, when the need to create sustainable business models that had social and environmental considerations as integral elements, began to be recognised.

Socially driven philanthrophy, as part of a business model, can be traced back to the 1800s. Sir Titus Salt built the model village of Saltaire in 1853, to supply workers for his mill near Bradford.  Perhaps more famously, Joseph Rowntree built Bournville for his chocolate factory workers in 1879. Port Sunlight, built in 1888 by the Lever Brothers is another example of a business forging a symbiotic relationship with its workers.

The villages were built to provide good facilities and infrastructure - including education, recreation and medical assistance.  There was an interdependancy created between the success of the factory and the success of the people working for it.  A philanthropic model helped to create a sustainable business.

More recently, CSR has developed as way to describe the duty of care that a business has to all of its stakeholders - that is everyone who is affected by it's activity. This is linked to the concept of sustainable development - how a business can make decisions based not only on financial/economic factors (e.g. Profits, Return On Investment, dividend payments etc.) but also on both the immediate and the long-term social, environmental and other consequences of their activities.

For us at Addleshaw Goddard, CSR describes the way that our firm likes to do business.  We care about the people we interact with, whether they are our clients, our suppliers, our own people, or the communities in which we work.  In addition, we also care about the legacy our business will leave on the environment. 

We are responsible, in part, for the future success of all of our stakeholders.

The Government sees CSR as the business contribution to our sustainable development goals. Essentially it is about how business takes account of its economic, social and environmental impacts in the way it operates – maximising the benefits and minimising the downsides.
CSR.gov.uk

CSR is the acknowledgement by companies that they should be accountable not only for their financial performance, but for the impact of their activities on society and/or the environment.
Confederation of British Industry