The United Nations Global Compact is a non-binding United Nations pact to get businesses and firms worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on their implementation. The UN Global Compact is the world's largest corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility initiative, with more than 20,000 corporate participants and other stakeholders in over 167 countries. The organization consists of a global agency, and local "networks" or agencies for each participating country. Under the Global Compact, companies are brought together with UN agencies, labour groups and civil society.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) or corporate social impact is a form of international private business self-regulation which aims to contribute to societal goals of a philanthropic, activist, or charitable nature by engaging in, with, or supporting professional service volunteering through pro bono programs, community development, administering monetary grants to non-profit organizations for the public benefit, or to conduct ethically oriented business and investment practices. While once it was possible to describe CSR as an internal organizational policy or a corporate ethic strategy similar to what is now known today as Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG); that time has passed as various companies have pledged to go beyond that or have been mandated or incentivized by governments to have a better impact on the surrounding community. In addition, national and international standards, laws, and business models have been developed to facilitate and incentivize this phenomenon. Various organizations have used their authority to push it beyond individual or industry-wide initiatives. In contrast, it has been considered a form of corporate self-regulation for some time, over the last decade or so it has moved considerably from voluntary decisions at the level of individual organizations to mandatory schemes at regional, national, and international levels. Moreover, scholars and firms are using the term "creating shared value", an extension of corporate social responsibility, to explain ways of doing business in a socially responsible way while making profits.