Annals of the University of Oradea: Economic Science (Jul 2013)
CONCEPTUAL DELIMITATIONS ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Abstract
Sustainable development is a model for resource use meant to satisfy human needs, without polluting the environment, so that these needs can be satisfied not only in the present, but in the future as well. It is a concept of nowadays with no generally accepted definition, placing environment first and foremost, aiming at implementing the environmental policies in all structures and at all economic levels. Within the present study we have aimed at creating a conceptual delimitation on sustainable development, sustainability and socialresponsibility, concepts of present interest, that tend to become a mystery for the academic community and practitioners by their variety and complexity of approaches. During our scientific endeavor we believe that social responsibility is the foundation of sustainable development. Sustainable development is a concept used especially at macro-economic level, while social responsibility is used at entity level and incorporates the economic, environmental and social dimension, which has a voluntary character and tries to respond to the information needs of the society and other stakeholders. Sustainability at the entity\'s level is the goal or final objective of sustainable development – satisfaction of present needs without compromising the possibility for future generations to satisfy their own needs, while social responsibility is an intermediate phase of sustainability wherein entities try to balance the economic, social and environmental dimension. Thus, we can state we include ourselves within social corporatism, slightly close to social institutionalism, which is characteristic to developed countries, giving a particular importance to social contract and relations between entity and society. We believe that in Romania, a POSDRU funded project should be regarded as a legal person with social values, which must be based on sustainable development and to promote, besides legal liability of automatically deriving legal contract, social responsibility, which resulting from its relationship with society in which it is implemented, and within these relations, environmental protection represent a major social responsibility of any kind of project.
