The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a relevant theme and recently it has stimulated lot of scientific debates, focusing on its advantages to business in general and to society. In an effort to explore CSR processes within companies, the main purpose of this study is to analyze the Brazilian Corporate Social Balance. The framework of analysis is based on published contents of the instrument (Corporate Social Balance), for the period of two years. The units analyzed are two large enterprises in the steel sector in Minas Gerais State. We used content and photographic analysis (BAUER, 2007; BARDIN, 2004) to attain the research objectives. To support the content analysis, we used Carroll's Pyramid of Social Responsibility theory (1991) as our theoretical approach. The results show that although companies' discourse focuses mainly on ethical reasons for investing in CSR, the actual motivation is the brand reinforcement and positioning.
Social responsibility; Social balance; Sustainability; Global Reporting Initiative - GRI
