Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which began as a theoretical concept, has sparked a significant cultural revolution. The ongoing debate on CSR reveals how a company’s social interest is intertwined with specific forms of governance and organizational culture, influenced by competitive dynamics and entrepreneurial choices.

The volume traces the transition from the economic action of a few companies enlightened, pioneering companies that were the first to adopt soft law tools in the field of CSR, such as codes of ethics and conduct, international standards of production and care of the various stakeholders, to the consolidation of a set of CSR rules that today are fully part of hard law into binding legal frameworks.

This transition has been driven by growing public concern over social and environmental issues and sealed by careful legislative work by the Community institutions. It can only be fully appreciated through a necessary reading, in a comparative key, of the legislation in force on CSR in various European countries and of the particularly emblematic cases submitted in recent times to the Courts.