Abstract. The corporate social responsibility is a desideratum of the world and it is an important premise of the business environment. The objectives of this presentation are: conceptual understanding, the identification of the advantages generated by the social responsibility for the company and for the society as a whole, the determination of the correlation between the enterprise’s efforts and the obtained effects, the pointing out of the necessity of setting up of the corporate social responsibility on ethical criteria. As a corollary, one can appreciate that the corporate social responsibility is a source of competitive advantage and a strategic intercession.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility; business ethics; innovation; sustainability; competitive advantage.