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4.2 CSR and anti-corruption

Some scholars, such as Bacio Terracino (2007) in his study Anti Corruption: The Enabling CSR Principle
affirm that anti-corruption standards have received considerably less attention in CSR than issue such as

labour rights, environment or human rights. Indeed, the consequences of corruption for individuals and
societies are only an evidence on a long term trend and so are not self-evident. As corruption is a threat to
society, it is an important component of CSR.

The first voices addressing anti-corruption in the real of CSR started to be heard in 2000 when the UN

Global Compact Initiative was launched. Anti-corruption is linked to the tenth principle: “Businesses
should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.” Corruption is indeed seen
as an obstacle for social and economic development all over the world having negative impacts for
sustainability and community development. Corruption affects business growth, impacts costs by raising
them considerably and induces serious legal and reputational risks. Anti-corruption laws emerge nationally
at a worldwide scale. The UN also provides a platform for companies in order to institute dialogue, mutual
learning and exchange of best practices on the issue.

4.3 Transparency, Accountability and Financial Sustainability of companies

Within the transparency perspective, many actors can ask companies to disclose their information.
According to scholars Aggeri and Le Breton (2016) in their study The Regulation of Transparency in the
field of CSR (2016) we can distinguish among these actors:

- NGOs: they value transparency to answer to the needs of citizens to be informed and to promote
corporate transparency. They can eventually institute transparency awards or publicly critize companies
that fail to be transparent.

- Public authorities: in the name of transparency,they approve legislation and regulations to create CSR
reporting obligations for company’s big corporations.