Editorial

Citation

Aras, G. and Crowther, D. (2008), "Editorial", Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 4 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/srj.2008.36804caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Social Responsibility Journal, Volume 4, Issue 3

It is now more than a year since the publishing of the journal was taken over by Emerald and the benefits are apparent. The journal has become more prominent and has benefited from the strength of Emerald’s ability to generate publicity. Additionally all issues of the journal, from its inception, are available online and this too has helped to raise the prominence of the journal. This is of course beneficial to us as authors because the papers published in the journal are accessible to – and consulted by – a much wider range of scholars. At the same time more people wish to publish in the journal and this inevitably extends the time from acceptance of a paper until its publication. We are doing our best to minimise this time but an extension of this time period is unfortunately unavoidable.

Social Responsibility Journal is of course the official journal of the Social Responsibility Research Network – a network of scholars worldwide who share similar interests regarding research, scholarship and engagement. In many ways the Network acts as a means of dissemination of information – both through its web site and through is Newsletter. Currently the membership of the Network exceeds 400 and members come from over 50 countries around the world. Many of you will know this and will already be a member. But if you are not already a member then you are also invited to join the Network. Full details can be found at www.socialresponsibility.biz

The other main activity of the Network is to organise an annual conference and the 7th International Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility has recently taken place in Durham, UK. The conference was jointly organized by Durham University and the Social Responsibility Research Network and hosted by Durham University. Plans are currently in place for the 2009 conference – the 8th – which will take place in South Africa and a collaboration between the Network and the University of Pretoria. The rationale for the conferences has been based on the fact that over the last decade the question of the relationship between organisations and society has been subject to much debate. The conferences are designed to act as a forum for the debate and analysis of contemporary issues in this broad area. In doing so they attract people from a wide variety of disciplines and geographic regions for an exchange of views. The broad range of topics which are of concern in the area of corporate social responsibility are reflected not just in the conferences which we hold, but also in the contents of the journal. The worldwide interest in, and concern for, the subject matter is also reflected by the range of backgrounds from which participants at the conference hail from – not just in terms of areas of expertise, but also in terms of geographical locations. Full details of all past and future conference can be found from the Network web site. We hope to be able to welcome you at the next, or a future, conference.

The journal, just as the conference, is interdisciplinary in its focus and international in its outlook – and this is reflected in the papers in this issuee. They cover such things as disclosure practices in Egypt and in Indonesia; greenhouse gas emission in Spain; E-learning; and Bakhtin’s theory of speech. All papers have, however, the commonality that they investigate an aspect of social responsibility – and one feature of social responsibility is that it is a very wide and very interdisciplinary field. With that we leave you to read the papers, hoping that this will inspire you to contribute to a future issue.

Güler Aras, David Crowther