This special issue explores the relationship among CSR, standardisation and critical management and is composed of 5 papers.

In "Can CSR be Standardized Through Integrative Socio-economic Management ?", Henri Savall, Véronique Zardet, Michel Péron and Marc Bonnet examine the importance of debates on the integration of CSR norms and economic standards. They have identified phenomena and dysfunctions that alter and disturb economic and social game rules, describe their characteristics and impacts on firms, provide another tentative concept of global sustainable performance for corporate audit and decision making and study the feasibility and competitiveness of pro-active strategies to integrate standards both at the corporate level and institutional level. They proposed to apply a measurement methods combining qualitative, quantitative and financial performance metrics as opposed to the extent fragmented approach by silos which separate social norms and economic performance in order to reach sustainability.

Paolo Rossi in" the Rubik's Cube of social accountability: an institutional analysis of the standardization of Italian(ized) social reporting guidelines" explores analogies and differences across Italian (and Italianized) social reporting guidelines. The goal of this analysis is to catch whether different guidelines are moving towards uniformity and standardization or, alternatively, guidelines still embody and convey different motives and representations of social accountability processes. The standardization of social reporting guidelines in Italy, observed through the lens of reporting guidelines, has followed two tracks: