Talking into (non)existence: Denying or constituting paradoxes of Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

Organizations can be understood as sites of persistent tensions between equally legitimate claims. In other words, organizations may be paradoxical. However, paradoxes do not pre-exist as a matter of fact. This article investigates how dominant academic discourses either constitute or deny potential paradoxes of Corporate Social Responsibility. It follows the theoretical perspective of CCO – Communication Constitutes Organizations and, more specifically, a ventriloqual approach. Academics are like ventriloquists, they breath life into dummies who establish theoretical figures that may or may not support paradoxical thinking in organizational research. The qualitative meta-analysis shows that potential Corporate Social Responsibility paradoxes are primarily talked into nonexistence. Managerial ventriloquists reject Corporate Social Responsibility tensions in the interests of organizational consistency and harmony. Critical ventriloquists accept tensions, but assume their causes lie in gaps between rhetoric and practice. The preferred figure is not a paradoxical one, but that of organizational hypocrisy. Overall, non-paradoxical approaches dominate; they, in turn, ventriloquize their creators, thereby limiting the scope of future research. A communicative perspective is instead open to the constitution of Corporate Social Responsibility paradoxes. It enables practitioners to engage in a proactive management of organizational tensions and encourages scholars to reflect on the constituted nature of academic discourses.