Tourism and Corporate Social Responsibility

This chapter lays the foundations of the sustainable behaviour of an organisation and its evolution towards more strategic and value creating. The first section introduces the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility. We then explain the evolution of the concept of CSR in relation to different theoretical approaches used to justify the business case for CSR: resource based view of the firm, reputation and risk management, and stakeholder management. Later, we suggest that the cutting edge in CSR is ensuring that companies develop sustainable competitive advantage putting at work the Creating Shared Value framework, and while the concept is rather aspirational, we reflect on the methods available to do so for the tourism industry. In doing so, this chapter traces the rationale for corporate social responsibility and suggests avenues for further research.