Consideration of Ethical and Legal Aspects of Corporate Social Responsibility, issue of MNCs and sustainable development: case studies of Enron USA, MacDonalds UK and Shell Nigeria

"Over the last ten years, the world has witnessed widespread business failures and even collapses; these have been devastating to the global-economy. The major problem is not that the global-economic downturn has affected businesses; rather, it is the other way round – the business activities, particularly of MNCs have influenced the global-economy in one special way – by impacting on the sustainable development of society. Within this period, corporations have claimed to promote CSR and be committed to sustainable development, while equally engaging in harmful business practices. Unethical behaviours and illegal practices (such as cheating, greedy and deceit) sometimes eventually end up in causing the heads and/or the corporations problems. The major aim of this paper is to consider the ethical and legal aspects of CSR, particularly the paper examines whether sensitivity/adherence to both ethical and legal practices by MNCs will have more positive impact on CSR in relation to all the stakeholders, particularly on the sustainable development of the wider community. This paper by taken a critical approach chooses three giant multinational corporations in three different legal regimes for brief empirical illustrations: Enron in the North America (US), MacDonald’s in the United Kingdom (Europe) and Shell in Nigeria (Africa). Key words: CSR, ethical, legal, MNCs business, sustainable development, corporate governance, stake-holder engagement, empirical legal methods"