Socially Responsible and Sustainable Science: Evolutionary Overview of Theoretical Branding Schools in V4 Countries

The paper deals with the concept of socially responsible and sustainable science. It is analysed via applying the principles of the evolutionary overview of theoretical branding schools in V4 countries. The need of analysing contemporary scientific approaches to the selected issue in the light and shadow of trends and perspectives of coherence in the theoretical schools which have been created so far, lies in the repolarization of the perception of the term “socially responsible”. Nowadays, its implementation is much wider than it used to be in scope of simple triangular structure of traditional pillars of social responsibility. Social responsibility is slowly replaced by sustainable development in its pure nature. Thus, the long term orientation and systematic goal orientation is much appreciated than single socially responsible activities. In the presented paper, we combine two new approaches – analysis of the creation of theoretical scientific schools as a pillar of sustainable science and trendology in brand management as a pillar of sustainable economic development. Only via unifying theory and practice of brand as a powerful market phenomenon, the positive synergic effect would be expected. The analysis of current theoretical branding schools is provided on the basis of Web of Science platform and its analytical tools on the sample of V4 countries. The reason for such a selection of sample is the existing significance of the brand value perception caused by specific socio-economic development of this region in the second half of 20th century which creates optimal platform for ongoing evolution of brand and branding in its managerial consequences. Based on the provided analysis, it has been found out that sustainability in scientific approaches to this issue is present only in case of Slovak Republic where coherent branding theoretical school with leading scientific authorities exists. In case of other analysed countries, only individual brand and branding initiatives are developed via authors who perceive brand as a supplementary phenomenon used to explain other relevant objects of their research. Similarly, neither trends in these countries reflect the need of systematic study of detected trends and contemporary global scientific theoretical flows.