ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what it means to be a "responsible" leader, specifically by considering the challenges and dilemmas facing executives in four key corporate social responsibility (CSR) domains: diversity, ethics, sustainability, and citizenship. It describes three prototypical approaches to CSR—global, local, and transnational—and discusses their implications for global executives, with a particular focus on the tensions and possible trade-offs between globally integrated and locally adapted CSR strategies, the constraints they impose on managerial behavior, and the competencies they require in global leaders. The chapter focuses mainly on the ethical responsibility domain but also considers the economic and legal dimensions of CSR when necessary. A transnational approach adopts a hybrid strategy, resting on the assumption that global and local approaches to CSR are not mutually exclusive. A transnational approach to CSR is most demanding in terms of required managerial and leadership skills, in that it requires managers to reconcile the different, and often conflicting, expectations of their global and local stakeholders.
