Public Policies on Corporate Social Responsibility: The Role of Governments in Europe Laura Albareda Josep M. Lozano Tamyko Ysa ABSTRACT. Over the last decade, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been defined first as a concept whereby companies decide voluntarily to contribute to a better society and cleaner environment and, second, as a process by which companies manage their relation- ship with stakeholders (European Commission, 2001. Nowadays, CSR has become a priority issue on govern- ments’ agendas. This has changed governments’ capacity to act and impact on social and environmental issues in their relationship with companies, but has also affected the framework in which CSR public policies are designed: governments are incorporating multi-stakeholder strate- gies. This article analyzes the CSR public policies in European advanced democracies, and more specifically the EU-15 countries, and provides explanatory keys on how governments have understood, designed and imple- mented their CSR public policies. The analysis has entailed the classification of CSR public policies taking into consideration the actor to which the governments’ policies were addressed. This approach to the analysis of CSR public policies in the EU-15 countries leads us to observe coinciding lines of action among the different countries analyzed, which has enabled us to propose a ‘four ideal’ typology model for governmental action on CSR in Europe: Partnership, Business in the Community, Sustainability, and Citizenship, and Agora. The main con- tribution of this article is to propose an analytical frame- work to analyze CSR public policies, which provide a perspective on the relationships between governments, businesses, and civil society stakeholders, and enable us to incorporate the analysis of CSR public policies into a broader approach focused on social governance. KEY WORDS: corporate social responsibility, public policies, governance, public–private partnership, welfare state Introduction Over the last decade we have seen how governments have become Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) drivers adopting public policies to promote Laura Albareda is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Innovation, ESADE, Universidad Ramon Llull- URL. She is principal researcher and manager of the Observatory on Socially Responsible Investment in Spain. Her areas of research and academic interest are Corporate Social Responsibility, Business Ethics, Global Gover- nance and Public Authorites, Governments and Public Policies on Corporate Social Responsibility and So- cially Responsible Investment. Josep M. Lozano is currently Professor & Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Innovation, ESADE Business School (URL). He is Co-founder of E ´ tica, Economı ´a y Direccio ´n (Spanish branch of the EBEN) and member of the editorial board of Ethical Perspectives and Society and Business Re- view. He was member of the Catalan Government’s Com- mission on Values, and is member of the Spanish Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs’ Commission of Experts on CSR. He has been a highly commended runner-up in the European Faculty Pioneer Awards of the Beyond Grey Pinstripes and is author of Ethics and Organizations. Understanding Business Ethics as a Learning Process (Kluwer). Tamyko Ysa is an Assistant Professor of the Institute of Public Management, and the Department of Business Policy at ESADE. Her areas of interest are the management of part- nerships and their impact on the creation of public value; the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies, and the relations between companies and governments. She is the Principal Researcher of the Research Group for Leadership and Innovation in Public Management (GLIGP). She is coauthor of Governments and Corporate Social Responsibility (Palgrave MacMillan). Journal of Business Ethics (2007) 74:391–407 Ó Springer 2007 DOI 10.1007/s10551-007-9514-1