Abstract:

Social responsibility of organizations is a topic that gained attention from both practitioners, academics and policy makers. As a direction of action for firms of different sizes, corporate social responsibility (CSR) was strongly promoted by professional associations, which also made consistent efforts to standardize and measure its impacts. The pressures excreted by these professional associations on political organizations is seen in the policies developed at the level of the European Union, policies that were translated also in national laws or policies. In this paper we investigate this direction of action, with an emphasis on CSR related policies relevant to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). While we start with the macro, international level, with emphasis on the European framework, our focus is Romania, and the CSR related policies implemented nationally aimed at promoting social responsibility of the organizations.