Destroying the village to save it: corporate social responsibility,labour relations,and the rise and fall of American hegemony

Abstract

The literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), produced largely by American business school academics, has, over the last generation, ignored an empirical record of corporate irresponsibility, especially in the area of employment relations. This neglect is puzzling given the skepticism of previous generations of CSR scholars and the importance these placed on labour-management cooperation. Arrighi’s (1994) theory of the rise and fall of hegemonic societies can explain this shift in perspective. According to Arrighi, American global economic hegemony emerged a century ago powered by its multi-divisional corporations, but the extraordinary autonomy exercised by this organizational form stimulated demands for the responsible use of its economic power. When American hegemony was still new and based on industrial development, the discourse on CSR focused on ‘the labour question’ in order to insure productivity and social peace. As the nature of American hegemony expanded after World War II, academic views on appropriate corporate responsibilities broadened accordingly, and CSR embraced a pluralistic perspective capable of competing with other systems. Once American hegemony began its decline, and new competitive and financial pressures shook the stability of its institutions, the field of Business and Society adopted a managerialist version of CSR that relied on nonconsequentialist ethical abstractions. This contemporary perspective has had no measurable impact on corporate behaviour, and as American hegemony dissipates, any future version of CSR will necessarily be less ethnocentric, perhaps originating within other societies.