Corporate social responsibility in the context of "Greenhouse gas protocol"

A grant is a fund given by a person or organization, often a public body, charitable foundation, a specialised grant-making institution, or in some cases a business with a corporate social responsibility mission, to an individual or another entity, usually, a non-profit organisation, sometimes a business or a local government body, for a specific purpose linked to public benefit. Unlike loans, grants are not intended to be paid back. Examples include student grants, research grants, the Sovereign Grant paid by the UK Treasury to the monarch, and some European Regional Development Fund payments in the European Union.

The stakeholder theory is a theory of organizational management and business ethics that accounts for multiple constituencies impacted by business entities like employees, suppliers, local communities, creditors, and others. It addresses morals and values in managing an organization, such as those related to corporate social responsibility, market economy, and social contract theory.

The stakeholder view of strategy integrates a resource-based view and a market-based view, and adds a socio-political level. One common version of stakeholder theory seeks to define the specific stakeholders of a company (the normative theory of stakeholder identification) and then examine the conditions under which managers treat these parties as stakeholders (the descriptive theory of stakeholder salience).

Social accounting (also known as social and environmental accounting, corporate social reporting, corporate social responsibility reporting, non-financial reporting or non-financial accounting) is the process of communicating the social and environmental effects of organizations' economic actions to particular interest groups within society and to society at large. Social Accounting is different from public interest accounting as well as from critical accounting. This 21st century definition contrasts with the 20th century meaning of social accounting in the sense of accounting for the national income, gross product and wealth of a nation or region.

Social accounting is commonly used in the context of business, or corporate social responsibility (CSR), although any organisation, including NGOs, charities, and government agencies may engage in social accounting. Social Accounting can also be used in conjunction with community-based monitoring (CBM).

In a corporation, a stakeholder is a member of "groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist", as defined in the first usage of the word in a 1963 internal memorandum at the Stanford Research Institute. The theory was later developed and championed by R. Edward Freeman in the 1980s. Since then it has gained wide acceptance in business practice and in theorizing relating to strategic management, corporate governance, business purpose and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The definition of corporate responsibilities through a classification of stakeholders to consider has been criticized as creating a false dichotomy between the "shareholder model" and the "stakeholder model", or a false analogy of the obligations towards shareholders and other interested parties.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is shorthand for an investing principle that prioritizes environmental issues, social issues, and corporate governance. Investing with ESG considerations is sometimes referred to as responsible investing or, in more proactive cases, impact investing. The term is also frequently used interchangeably with corporate social responsibility and sustainability, although these concepts have different foci, origins and applications.

The term ESG first came to prominence in a 2004 report titled "Who Cares Wins", which was a joint initiative of financial institutions at the invitation of the United Nations (UN). By 2023, the ESG movement had grown from a UN corporate social responsibility initiative into a global phenomenon representing more than US$30 trillion in assets under management.

Development studies is an interdisciplinary branch of social science. Development studies is offered as a specialized master's degree in a number of reputed universities around the world. It has grown in popularity as a subject of study since the early 1990s, and has been most widely taught and researched in developing countries and countries with a colonial history, such as the UK, where the discipline originated. Students of development studies often choose careers in international organisations such as the United Nations, World Bank, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), media and journalism houses, private sector development consultancy firms, corporate social responsibility (CSR) bodies and research centers.

Environmental full-cost accounting (EFCA) is a method of cost accounting that traces direct costs and allocates indirect costs by collecting and presenting information about the possible environmental costs and benefits or advantages – in short, about the "triple bottom line" – for each proposed alternative. It is one aspect of true cost accounting (TCA), along with Human capital and Social capital. As definitions for "true" and "full" are inherently subjective, experts consider both terms problematic.

Since costs and advantages are usually considered in terms of environmental, economic and social impacts, full or true cost efforts are collectively called the "triple bottom line". Many standards now exist in this area including Ecological Footprint, eco-labels, and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives' approach to triple bottom line using the ecoBudget metric. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has several accredited standards useful in FCA or TCA including for greenhouse gases, the ISO 26000 series for corporate social responsibility coming in 2010, and the ISO 19011 standard for audits including all these.