The Oxford-Achilles Working Group
on Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract: Business adoption of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies can no longer be seen just as a matter of voluntary practice. In one sense it was never really voluntary, being in most cases a response to market pressures and reputational risk. But increasingly legal mechanisms are also being employed to foster and enforce adoption and compliance with CSR policies. The source of this legal intervention is not necessarily conventional state regulation but rather indirect state pressure and the use of private law by private actors, notably NGOs, sometimes through highly innovative uses of law. This paper analyses the new strategies being used to foster and enforce CSR through law. But it also notes the limits of legal control of business, and explores emergent strategies for using the market and reputational risk as 'complementary controls' to enforce enhanced legal compliance, focussing particularly on compliance with the spirit and not just the letter of the law. The paper demonstrates the new governance at work and the emergence of wider forms and sources of corporate accountability.

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