The ubiquity of the term CSR threatens its carrying any distinctive meaning. Despite its long history no consensus has been developed among the industry participants, academics or other interested parties. After a careful review of the complications and complexities of the CSR debate and distinct disciplinary definitions, the article turns to approach the problem of definition using the philosophy of science. It applies a scientific definitional approach of genus, differentia and species to arrive at a definition of CSR as international private business selfregulation. The article provides an overview of the implications of this definition on CSR as a field of study, a management practice and an approach to improving the dialogue concerning the social contribution of business.

The terms “corporate social responsibility” (CSR), “sustainability”, “sustainable development” and “corporate sustainability” (CS) are critical terms for developing, analysing and evaluating public and private policy goals. These terms are used to make decisions about investment, policy development, and strategy creation. The terms emerged in different fields of endeavour at different points in time. Accordingly, they have different meanings; however, over time they have come to be used interchangeably mixing up policy agendas, confusing managers, regulators, activists and the public at large. We demonstrate that CSR is the best term for focusing on individual business organisations, “corporate sustainability” is an organisation level environmental policy, “sustainable development” is a public policy, and “sustainability” is the broadest term encompassing global local and organisational levels.

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Retailers serve as the main interface between business and society. This study explores the Corporate Social Responsibility priorities and performance of the largest 23 global retailers. This set of global retailers, who have a major impact on society, were studied in terms of social, environmental and sustainability practices and strategy, and there performance was analysed and evaluated. The study uses a four-dimensional Social, Economic, Environmental, Supply Chain model for sustainability performance evaluation. We rely on data collected from annual reports, and find that global retailers have addressed the business-society interface in relatively balanced ways for the different dimensions of CSR. Further, our findings indicate that global retailers in different regions have different CSR priorities. In particular, the data indicates that the US retailers place a lower priority on supply chain sustainability performance, followed by the Australians, while European retailers place a higher priority. The study concludes that while global retailers all pay attention to the same dimensions of CSR and do so differently in the different regions, the variation and lack of significant progress indicates that there is a role for stronger government regulation. This study contributes to the literature by shifting the analysis from country to a global level, is more objective in relying on reported data rather than interviews or surveys and provides a new analytical tool.

The idea that green banking disclosure leads to increased firm value has been rightly considered as over‐simplistic. This paper builds on key prior insights by investigating whether combining green disclosure with other contextual factor, such as non‐performing loans, provides additional insight into the complex green disclosure–firm value relationship in a regulatory setting where green law has recently been enacted for the banking industry. We present an analysis of seven years of data sourced from listed banks in Bangladesh (2008–2014), with data analysed using multiple regression. Our findings indicate that, while green disclosure has a positive effect on the overall firm value of banks, this positive effect is negatively moderated by banks' non‐performing loans. This research contributes to the knowledge by showing that green disclosure alone is insufficient for creating market value for banks. Additional contextual matters need attention to understand the impact of green disclosure in contributing to increased market value for banks.