What is CSR

Corporate Social Responsibility is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into business model. CSR policy functions as built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby a business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of law ethical standards, and international norms. The goal of CSR is to embrace responsibility for the company actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public who may also considered as stakeholders.

Difficulties of Managing CSR Across Border

The role of the corporation in society varies across countries is the challenges facing corporations in establishing their policy toward corporate social responsibility.

·         Multinational corporations, which by definition operate in multiple political and legal jurisdictions - Are continually attempting to find the proper balance between the roles and behaviors expected by their home government and those expected by all the host governments in the countries in which they operate.

The approach (by Rob van Tulder & Alex van der Zwart) suggests are the main actors in the policy formulation process:

The Aglo-Saxon Approach

By the analysis of van Tulder and van der Zwart’s:

• Government must contract with the private sector to purchase goods or services, it should be done through an open and competitive bidding process.
•   Based on the analysis, when the business and the government fail to maintain sufficient separation, Anglo-Saxons deem that failure as corruption.
•  U.S – Anglo-Saxons focuses on competition, not cooperation.

The Asian Approach

•  Many Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, China and Indonesia come to mind-rely on close cooperation between the private sector and the government.
• For example, the economic influenced of Japan’s keiretsu and Korea’s chaebol rests on their willingness to do the government’s bidding and vice-versa.
• “Asian Way” are called by mostly of Asian leaders that view this cooperation the linchpin of their successful development strategies.
• The important thing that we should remember are, based on the perspective of Anglo-Saxon approach, the “crony capitalism” is viewed as the relationship between business and government. Then, the civil society plays a minor role in this process.

The Continental European Approach

• In continental European countries, the three actors have more cooperative ways of working with one another.
• In germany, large employer associations bargain with umbrella labor organizations under the watchful supervision of the government.
• Germany's codetermination policy gives workers a well-defined role in the governance of large business. 
• In general, the public policy process is based upon creating consensus among the three actors. Cooperation, not competition is higlighted of this approach
• Based on the three approached that have been explained, conceptualizes the responsibilities of government, business, and civil society quite differently. 

Regulating International Ethics and Social Responsibility

There has a few description of the important and representative regulations:

Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)

The FCPA prohibits U.S. firms, their employees, and agents acting on their behalf from paying or offering to pay bribes to any foreign government official in order to influence the official actions or policies of that individual to gain or retain business.
For example, Baker Hughes paid a $44 million fine to settle charges it violated the FCPA in Angola, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, and Uzbekistan. The FCPA does not outlaw routine payments, regardless of their size, made to government officials to expedite normal commercial transactions. 

Alien Tort Claims Act

Alient Tort Claims Act has recently emerged as a potentially significant law affecting U.S. multinational corporations. U.S multinationals may conceivably be responsible for human rights abuses by foreign governments if the companies benefited from those abuses.

For instance, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently allowed citizens of Burma to proceed with a case accusing Unocal of knowingly using forced labor by the Burmese military.

Anti-Bribery Convention of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

The Convention is an attempt to eliminate bribery in international business transaction. Its centerpiece mandates jail time for those convicted of paying bribes.

International Labor Organization (ILO)

Became to monitoring working conditions in factories in developing countries. ILO has begun to systematically inspect working conditions in countries such as Bangladesh, Combodia, and the Philippines. Corporation find that such an independent inspection mechanism helps allay concerns from consumer activist groups, factory owners are also finding that subjecting themselves to regular ILO inspections helps them establish new business relationships with multinational corporations.