GPPi presents at the 2nd International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility
On 13 October 2006, GPPi Project Manager Julia Steets and Thomas Weihe presented a paper on “Corporate Social Responsibility – What We Could Learn from the Past” at the 2nd International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility. The two-day conference was organized by Berlin’s Humboldt University and brought together a large number of international researchers and CSR practitioners. Julia Steets and Thomas Weihe contributed a paper on the development of CSR. They argue that most current research on CSR is myopic and neglects the contribution that could be made by historians. In the paper, the authors describe the conditions for using comparative historical cases in contemporary CSR research. By providing examples from corporate history in Germany in the 1920s and 30s, they provide interesting insights into the motives of companies to engage in CSR activities, on the effectiveness of different tools and methods used in CSR, as well as on the long-term trends in CSR development.