Law-guided CSR: Ten Commandments for the 21st Century

The role of the law in the CSR project is rarely discussed in the CSR literature. This article sketches out the boundaries of legal CSR by defining and updating its operational principles: areas where voluntary corporate action is or should be guided by the Law. Emerging principles are included, such as meeting tax obligations, refraining from taking advantage of disaster-struck communities, and prioritising the human in the age of Artificial Intelligence.
The discussion is both descriptive and normative: it is expected that the Law will gradually assume a more prominent guiding role in developing new principles, just like it did for established principles like ‘transparency’ and ‘anti-corruption’. Policy metaphors – like the ‘Ten Commandments’ proposed here – have the potential to evolve into powerful tools of conceptual clarification, and once accepted in the global discourse, into stimuli for action and uniformization. Their application can also prevent what has been referred to as the manipulative policies and practices in the iron triangle: businesses, legal systems, and industries.