Corporate Social Responsibility Practices in Emerging Economies: The Case of Bangladesh

This book is an outcome of a study on corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and their contextual determinants in Bangladesh, with a focus on the Bangladeshi pharmaceutical industry. The author argues that businesses in Bangladesh need to collaborate with the Government to close the existing gap of distrust and lack of confidence. The stunning development in Bangladesh’s pharmaceutical sector has been largely attributed to multi-national corporations, but CSR practices, local policy support and international regulatory concessions were also vital to the industry’s growth. CSR issues are largely country-specific and divergent in nature, and the author identifies a list of Bangladesh-specific CSR issues including workplace health and safety, consumer rights, employment standards, the regulatory regime, democratic polity, and corruption. The author suggests a more comprehensive definition of CSR as ‘a corporation’s responsible behaviour that covers economic, legal, ethical, philanthropic and environmental issues of business and society’. Despite the absence of a standard marketplace, it is possible to use CSR in developing countries, in a localized form.