Social Responsibility or sustainability: an approach from the environment and communication

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to show the numerous academic contributions in the areas of Economy and Business Management about the Social Responsibility Theory, and to show the different settings or scenarios which are important to consider when this topic is studied. The main objective is to provide a view of Social Responsibility from an interdisciplinary perspective, supporting it with definitions of Social Responsibility Theory and contrasting different contributions. There is an analysis of the following concepts: Environment, Corporate Culture and Organizational Communication. The article states that Communication is directly related to SR, reason for which it should be considered in every aspect of human activity. The analysis, results, and suggestions presented are part of an exploratory and bibliographic research, which started at the end of the 1980s. The results obtained suggest that, although the subject of SR or Social Sustainability has been studied for more than three decades, it has only received public attention in the last 10 years, mainly in traditional media such as Radio, Press and TV. It is concluded that companies or corporations do not consider Internal Communication and Information as one of their basic responsibilities.