Without social responsibility (SR), our current civilization hardly has a
chance to survive. SR covers in ISO 26000 (ISO, 2010) seven core subjects (see Fig. 1).
It links all of them with consideration of: (1) interdependence as the basis, and (2)
holism as the top intention, achievement, and pre-condition of success, based on
interdependence. We prefer no limitation of SR to companies; they follow influential
humans’ decisions. SR is a human attribute. Interdependence makes humans honest and
leads from one-sidedness to (requisite) holism. This leads out from the current crisis of
affluence and its blind alley, while SR reaches far beyond neoliberalism and charity.
Keywords: Blind alley, charity, crisis of affluence, debts, economy, European
Union, growth, holism, ISO 26000, income gap, interdependence, liberalism,
market competition, market fundamentalism, monopolies, nature destruction, neoliberalism,
reliability, social responsibility, systemic behavior.
