Abstract
Corporate governance and management on one side and social responsibility (SR) on the other have become more and more connected in assuring corporate success. Corporate governance and management holders currently have to implement corporate values into corporate codes (codes of ethics, codes of conduct or other statements of corporate values, responsibility and corporate governance). This means that corporations not only have a responsibility to stakeholders who have or represent important interests, but also to others outside their business relationships to contribute to the environment and the health, safety and well-being of the whole planet. Since corporate social responsibility (CSR) expands a corporation's accountability to wider stakeholders by reporting on their CSR activities (CSRR), it means that boards of directors are responsible for corporate social responsibility reporting. Practical experiences show that formal implementation (moral commitments) is usually not enough, due to the essential purpose of corporations (creating profit). Consequently, in the presented paper, we examine the legal framework of the EU on CSRR, with particular focus on the corporate governance statement, established by Directive 2006/46/EC. We analyse the aim, the content and the legal effects of this statement under the last amendments from 2014 (Directive 2014/95/EU) and evaluate its contribution to fortifying the role of CSR in the corporate governance of EU corporations. The presented paper argues the importance of institutional development in the context of corporate governance and the influence of institutional measures on corporate ethical behaviour and, consequently, on their success.
Keywords: Corporate governance and management, Corporate governance statement, CSR, Non-financial statement
Track: Governance
Word count: 3.677
