Orchestration of corporate social responsibility in company law – reframing human security through education

Abstract The objective of this paper is to argue the fundamental significance of education in addressing notable gaps in the constitutive, performance and evaluation criteria for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and endeavours to showcase the complementarity between education, human security, sustainable human development, and the pursuit of CSR as an ideal normative paradigm. An abstractive approach to studying CSR, which is common with some authors engages with corporate philanthropy, which has not been helpful outside traditional CSR paradigms without looking at key dynamics that can robustly underpin successful CSR. The paper explores the systemic nexus between sustainable development as an educational externality when embedded in CSR, climate change and action competence and how it dovetails into ‘education for sustainable development’. Methodologically, this paper doctrinally relies on the systematic analysis of written data sources to theoretically explore the central significance, and complementarity between human security, education, and human dignity and how they can orchestrate a holistic CSR paradigm. In 1994, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in formulating the human security doctrine recognised the syncretic correlation between human security, education, and sustainable human development as fundamental elements that should underpin CSR. This paper contends that these are necessary intrinsic components of human dignity as the central factor that justifies a multi-dimensional and proactive approach to CSR. Despite the criticisms against human security, this paper identifies it as an important concept that could instrumentally orchestrate a model of CSR that uniformly mainstreams sustainable human development and human dignity that leverages education which has routinely and traditionally been seen as a constitutive component of CSR. It reveals how a holistic path to CSR can reinvigorate the central pillars of human security and human dignity using education as a springboard and makes a compelling case for supporting explicit references to education in company law with appropriate human security informed constitutive, performance and evaluation criteria which are absent in existing legally orchestrated CSR.