One of the criticisms of CSR as a concept is that it is inherently vague. What, precisely, do the ‘social’ responsibilities of an organization actually mean? It is for this reason that the term social is sometimes dropped, and the more straightforward term ‘Corporate Responsibility’ used. However, by linking CSR specifically to stakeholders, this became less of a problem. Indeed, Ed Freeman,44 one of the originators of what became known as stakeholder theory, has suggested that CSR would be better understood as referring to Corporate Stakeholder Responsibility.
