Concepts and theories of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been examined and classified by scholars since the mid-1970s. However, owing to the evolving meaning of CSR and the huge number of scholars who have begun to analyze the issue in recent years fresh efforts are needed to understand new developments. Since there is a great heterogeneity of theories and approaches, the task remains a very hard one, mainly because heterogeneity derives from multi-disciplinary diversity. The criterion for selection is to consider the role that theorists confer to the firm. Following this idea, three groups of theories have been discerned: (1) the utilitarian group, in which the corporation is intended as a maximizing 'black box' where problems of externalities and social costs emerge; (2) the managerial category, where problems of responsibility are approached from inside the firm (internal perspective); (3) relational theories, or those in which the type of relations between the firm and the environment are at the center of the analysis. The three perspectives allow the reader to understand the most significant differences between the various theories of CSR. The objective is to classify the theories and to draw a map in which group specificities can be made available. This allows scholars to reach a better understanding of corporate-society relations, and enhances developments both in theoretical and empirical terms.

This analysis tries to discover an empirical validation to back up the hypothesis that the Italian phenomenon of social reporting has changed with regard to the past and is growing in importance. After considering the evolution of Italian literature on the issue, the paper tries to find connections between this literature and social reporting practices. Empirical findings are based on 62 Italian social reports. The paper tries to answer three questions: (a) what kind of organization publishes social reports; (b) what are the main differences, if any, between different reports belonging to diverse organizations; (c) which are the leading models. Social reports have been sorted according to three main issues: report objectives, emerging models and stakeholder mapping. Collected data suggest that there is a common ground for organizations in socially responsible behaviour, but also that this common ground fits the need of every single organization.

advice giving and taking, cognition, decision making, distributed cognition, docility, social responsibility,

This article o ers an alternative perspective on organizational cognition based on e-cognition whereby appeal to systemic cognition replaces the traditional computational model of the mind that is still extremely popular in organizational research. It uses information processing, not to explore inner processes, but as the basis for pursuing organizational matters. To develop a theory of organizational cognition, the current work presents an agent-based simulation model based on the case of how individual perception of scientific value is a ected by and a ects organizational intelligence units' (e.g., research groups', departmental) framing of the notorious impact factor. Results show that organizational cognition cannot be described without an intermediate meso scale -called here social organizing -that both filters and enables the many kinds of socially enabled perception, action and behavior that are so characteristic of human cognition.

Drawing on contemporary work that traces cognition to embodiment, we present a model of cognition in organisations. In so doing, we add a middle ground to previous models: far from opposing macro to micro, we focus on how the meso influences complex adaptive dynamics. Taking peer-review as an exemplar, we show that organisational needs can be fulfilled by orchestrated coordination. Constrained by brains and bodies (the micro domain) that attune to structural constraints (the macro domain), human beings use material cultureartefacts, language, practices, etc.to animate what we call social organising in the meso domain. The resulting coordination can anticipate organisational goals such that, as demonstrated in the case of peer-review, social organising regulates epistemic practice. Flexible, embodied activity enables reviewers and to meet the aims of organised science by pooling the expertise of those involved. They use multi-scalar dynamics that are mediated by material, temporal and spatial resources that, when concerted, constrain and enable organisational cognition.