Author : Agata Matarazzo, Maria Teresa Clasadonte, Carlo Ingrao and Francesco Lanuzza

Corporate social responsibility (“CSR” for short) is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. CSR policy functions as a mechanism whereby business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the respect of the law, ethical standards, and international norms. The goal of CSR is to embrace responsibility for the company’s actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. In this paper the environmental aspect of CSR for the highest relevance in corporate governance and policy will be put in focus, and it can be synthesized in the “environmental social governance” concept. Particularly, a very interesting approach, analysed in this work, is concerning the link between CRS in environmental governance and corporate success, which could result in financial returns, in fair stock pricing, in a higher asset value, in efficient portfolio investment, in pricing firm equity, and so on – roughly speaking – in capital investment and in all financial and economic activity of the companies for satisfying shareholders. In order to establish the internal drivers of environmental performance, are usually selected a number of indicators that better reflect the characteristics of the enterprises and their environmental and financial performances, such as profitability, costs, size, energy consumption, efficiency, potential pollution and risk.

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, Business Model, Eco-efficiency, Investments, Environmental governance

Article published in International Journal of Current  Engineering  and Technology, Vol.3,No.2 (June- 2013)