In search of corporate social responsibility: Introduction to special issue

Abstract

This introduction to the special issue aims to contextualize and critically comment on the current trajectory of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in both scholarly inquiry and business practice. It suggests that we must place it within the milieu of the ongoing economic crisis and the failure of a number of important opportunities to make business ethical (e.g. the 2012 Rio + 20 Earth Summit). It then suggests possible future terrain for tenable CSR research (and practice), especially in the context of widespread cynicism and disbelief regarding the claims of business ethicists in industry and the academy.

At the very moment that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) appears to be more needed than ever, its legitimacy, creditability and broader appeal has reached an all time low. As business analyst Michael Porter put it in a recent article, ‘the legitimacy of business has fallen to levels not seen in recent history’ (Porter and Kramer, 2011: 4). While reference to the importance of CSR and business ethics is now almost mandatory in MBA classes, glossy corporate websites and governmental policy releases, there is now deep and profound cynicism regarding its authenticity in relation to the activities of large enterprise. The dire track record of firms rebuked for social, environmental and economic irresponsibility is certainly significant here. After years of ‘talk’ about the way capitalist economic rationality and ethical social outcomes might be wed within the modern firm (including the ‘triple bottom line’, ‘stakeholder management’ and ‘corporate citizenship’), it is almost as if none of it really mattered when it comes to the day-to-day behaviour of many large business enterprises.

Does this not become strikingly evident when leaders of business and government policy makers are confronted with a genuine opportunity to make a difference? The grand failure of the ‘Rio + 20 Earth Summit’ is a good case in point. The occasion to forge new ways of approaching global economic activity was fervently resisted by vested interests. What could have been the beginning of a new era of sustainable corporate activity was instead hamstrung by an intransigent ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher, 2009) in which ethics took a backseat. Greenpeace International Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo, relays the difficulty in contesting the ‘business as usual’ cognitive maps of neoliberal rationality at the event. Indeed, his frustration is palpable: ‘We didn’t get the future we want in Rio, because we do not have the leaders we need. The leaders of the most powerful countries supported business as usual, shamefully putting private profit before people and the planet’ (Guardian, 2012).

This is not the place to reel off the innumerable cases in which large business firms and governmental representatives continue to almost flagrantly disregard the ethical dimensions of global economic activity. But despite the vast forays into ethical corporate activity, the immense amount of research concerning how financial success might be conjoined with broader responsibility issues, and the continuing reassurance by political leaders that corporations are not inherently harmful, the dismal reality before us speaks for itself. The 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, we suggest, galvanized the view that corporations still do not really care for anything beyond their profit maximizing/cost minimizing opportunities. Reports of accounting scandals and accusations of corruption are now almost expected in the daily press. We still learn that petroleum multinationals are prospecting previously protected areas of the globe (such as the polar ice caps and Alaskan wildlife sanctuaries), almost as if the idea of CSR never existed. Labour rights around the world continue to be eroded on an exponential level, with the global financial crisis lending license to pursue labour policies that would have made 19th century robber barons blush. And the virtues of unbridled consumerism are still proclaimed unabated, even when the unsustainable nature of its credo is obvious to all.

Much of this might be put down to the sheer strength of the modern corporate economy and its powerful interests. For example, take the 2010 attempt by the Australian Labor Government to introduce the Resources Super Profits Tax to curb the environmental damage associated with the country’s booming mining industry. The then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s proposed scheme was fiercely contested in media campaigns by the mining industry, which represent a powerful set of interests in the country due to the size of its revenues. The hawkish criticism and acrimony came to a head with the resignation of Rudd as Prime Minister and the withdrawal of the tax proposal. Big business and its formidable lobbyists had spoken, revealing their true colours when things might have been decidedly different.

Is there anything substantively useful in the area of CSR research when it comes to providing some ethical guidelines for the way business is done today, or should it be abandoned as just another piece of capitalist ideology? If there is an overriding feeling that we have all been somehow ‘duped’ by the premises and solutions of CSR, what might be the best way forward when its presence is more widespread now than ever? This special issue seeks to ask some hard questions about the status, role and future of CSR today. We do so because we suspect that the exploitative and myopic nature of capitalist economic practices appears not only to have survived years of CSR intact, but might have even prospered because of it. This special issue recommends critical (and hopefully constructive) inquiry at this juncture for a number of reasons.

CSR … the search continues

The present scholarly and empirical conditions that have prompted our renewed search for CSR might be described as follows. First, in the context of the global economic crisis, a strange paradox has emerged in relation to the politics of CSR research and practice. This paradox has two interesting facets for us. While companies are proclaiming the virtues of their ethicality on a scale never before seen (no large firm would omit a ‘social accounting report’ on its website), the ‘business as usual’ mentality now feels completely entrenched and immovable. The financial crisis might have opened up new ways of approaching the nature of economic activity, especially in terms of more progressive and imaginative alternative organizational forms. However, the religion of unsustainable accumulation now seems hegemonic, despite the growth in ‘green’ think-tanks, sustainable economic practice reports and the like. A second paradox pertains to the abiding legitimacy crisis of big business in much of the Western world. At the very time that the creditability of the large multinational’s commitment to CSR has reached a new ebb, we see the very discourse of ‘ethics’, ‘shared value’ and ‘giving back’ to society proliferate in scale, scope and ambition. Can we put this down to simple hypocrisy, or are we witnessing new points of leverage and dialogue being opened up around the role of economic rationality in the context of societal needs and goals?

The second reason why we have chosen this specific juncture to questioningly engage with CSR pertains to the academic discipline that has flourished around it over the last few decades. It must be remembered that contemporary CSR was born in the economic discourse that aimed to discourage managers (of large corporations) from following the ‘temptation’ to consider social objectives beyond their official remit (see Friedman, 1970). But it soon became a main theme in the business and management discipline, especially with a growing political awareness among consumers, workers and environmentally consciousness stakeholders during the 1980s. However, as Banerjee (2008) among others has suggested, it never really entailed a fundamental critique of the business firm per se. Why? Because it generally held on to the liberal belief that the profit-maximizing logic of capitalism might someday be tamed, restrained and harmonized with broader societal ethics. That CSR was ‘captured’ by the area of strategy (especially in the US) is no exaggeration. Under its auspices, the discipline has generally become concerned with the question of how ethics connects with revenue: that is, how might CSR add value to the bottom line (see the 2006 Journal of Management Studies special issue as an example of this predominant concern).

In the post-2008 environment of crisis, critique and cynicism, the CSR research agenda has reached an interesting impasse. Indicative of this is the concerted move into the area of business ethics and responsible corporate governance from unexpected quarters—precisely when critical voices are now becoming an un-ignorable force in management studies (and beyond). Otherwise conservative publications, such as the Harvard Business Review, now abound with suggestions and statements about the methods for achieving ethical business models. As one special issue of Harvard Business Review put it, the objective is clear: to save capitalism. For example, take a very popular article by Porter and Kramer (2011) regarding their notion of ‘shared value’. In an attempt to ‘rethink capitalism’ and recover its lost legitimacy among the general public, these business analysts suggest that corporations must now consider the wider social impact of their practices—not simply out of kindness, but as a tool to create value for all stakeholders. As they put it,

… the solution lies in the principle of shared value, which involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges. Businesses must reconnect company success with social progress. Shared value is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success. It is not on the margin of what companies do but at the center. We believe that it can give rise to the next major transformation of business thinking. (Porter and Kramer, 2011: 4)

Two things are interesting about such proclamations precisely at the moment some have even suggested that the CSR discourse should be abandoned once and for all as ‘trash talk’ [as Bansal and Clelland (2004) amusingly put it]. First is the explicit revival of the assumption that has perhaps been mainstream CSR’s enduring feature: that we might have both global capitalism and sustainability, corporate control and welfare, a consumer society and green solutions, etc. (see Elkington, 1994). As a number of commentators have noted, this ‘win–win’ expectation underlying much CSR practice and ideology misses the structural nature of the capitalist economic imperative. The nature of the firm is to make surpluses, and this so often (although not always) rubs up against wider ethical values in the community. As the business historian Robert Heilbroner (1985) put it some years ago, it is simply in the ‘DNA’ of capitalism to control, exploit and instrumentalize in the name of profit. This is why, perhaps, when CSR became popular in the late 1980s, large corporations swiftly relegated those charged with its objectives to the public relations departments, away from financial and strategy units where it might have made a real difference (Adams, 2002). CSR has nevertheless proved seductive, even in this emasculated form, in part perhaps because, as Baker and Roberts (2011) suggest, it offers managers a tacit form of moral sanction in their aggressive pursuit of profit. CSR in this respect is a way for managers to deceive themselves as well as others [also see Fleming and Jones (2013) in relation to CSR’s appeal to otherwise conscientious employees].

The second noteworthy point regarding this sudden interest in CSR among once hardened corporate strategists pertains more to the current economic crisis and widespread calls from the public, media and political parties for more regulation. Might the sudden interest in ethics and responsibility among pro-business analysts be a way of pre-empting the patently obvious need to regulate free markets and corporate activity, especially given the way corporations appear unwilling to wholeheartedly embody CSR prerogatives in their business models? It is analogous to CEOs framing corruption and ‘rogue traders’ as a cultural issue rather than a regulative one. If we rethink our internal cultures, the reasoning goes, then firms can be left alone and trusted to comply with legal protocols without ‘interference’ from external auditors and so forth. In other words, CSR becomes an excuse for ‘business as usual’ and unregulated corporate activity. Whether capitalism can be reinvented to be more ‘family friendly’ remains to be seen. But the skeptics are certainly gathering in numbers both inside the academy and among wider stakeholders who are no longer as trusting or forgiving as they might have once been.

Mapping CSR

In order to contextualize this present impasse and gain a more nuanced appreciation of its complexities, we might do well to map the terrain of present CSR research as it has developed over the past few years. Three general areas are evident, both in past and present research agendas. CSR is viewed as: a) undesirable given the profit imperative of the firm (e.g. Friedman); b) a possible panacea for taming the negative externalities of business enterprise (e.g. Porter and Kramer) or c) an ideological tool designed to cloak (or ‘green wash’) an otherwise uncaring corporation in the garb of ethicality and environmental friendliness.

The first area views CSR as either an impediment to the effective running of business (as social issues are something better left to governmental or non-profit bodies) or a necessary component that may enhance ‘enlightened self’ interest. It must be remembered that the very notion of CSR first surfaced as a rather derogatory term. The classic statement by Milton Friedman is well known by now. He was very worried about the rise of ‘business ethics’ (beyond the narrow financial remit of the firm) among managers in large publically listed firms. According to him, managers were either not qualified to deal with ‘social issues’ beyond their ascribed role entrusted by shareholders or risked damaging the fiduciary well-being of the organization by straying into ethical pursuits. The only responsibility the manager can legitimately be said to have is maximizing profits for shareholders or the company’s owners. As Friedman writes, ‘the key point is that, in his capacity as corporate executive, the manager is an agent of the individuals who own the corporate institution, and his (sic) primary responsibility is to them’ (1970: 33). Of course, following Friedman’s logic brings us to the strange conclusion that a manager is actually irresponsible if he or she becomes concerned with the environmental impact of its operations or attempt to curb the use of child labour in its value-chains (also see Leavitt, 1958). For example, when Goldman Sachs recently abandoned its controversial idea of delaying bonus payments by a few months—in order to make use of an impending corporate tax cut in the UK—managers were acting against the interests of the firm, and therefore unethically (they subsequently made up for this by significantly increasing its average salaries, despite widespread criticism for ‘insensitivity’ amid times of austerity). At this point, Friedmanian thought begins to look decidedly bizarre.

More perceptive approaches within this strand of thought have acknowledged the need for some kind of response to social, environmental and ethical troubles arising from pure economic rationality. Friedman himself later admitted that some kind of ‘enlightened self-interest’ might be best, especially in a threatening climate of criticism and litigation. We would argue that this concern with ‘enlightened self-interest’ perhaps covers a wide range of current forays into CSR in both corporate practice and management research. In other words, it is good for business to at least present the veneer of responsible behaviour, as long as it does not cut into the bottom line of the enterprise. A good deal of research in the US tradition (especially in the area of management strategy), for example, attempts to demonstrate how and why CSR activities can bolster the profit margin of firms, arguing that even if the idea of ethicality is somewhat vague, we might find moments of overlap between ‘doing good’ and making money.

A second area of research is more optimistic about the nature of this overlap. Indeed, much CSR scholarship is driven by the assumption that we might have its tenets and prescriptions co-exist alongside corporate capitalism and its institutional logic. They presume that there are many ways of doing business, organizing the labour and production process, and in fact, it makes good business sense (beyond ‘enlightened self-interest’) to take into consideration sometimes overtly non-economic social problems. In the extreme cases, the ideal ‘ethical company’ is thought to be the model for rethinking the very nature of the relation between business and society, especially in times of crisis and decline. The sub-areas of ‘stakeholder management’ and ‘corporate citizenship’ are good examples. In their call for a wider definition of citizenship, Matten and Crane (2005) argue that corporations might fill the institutional and political void left as the neoliberal state withdraws from civil society. In other words, the corporation is not inherently against the interests of other parties, and indeed, might be reformed to consider the provision and protection of stakeholders conventionally thought to be outside of its otherwise narrow economic remit. In this sense, corporate citizenship …

… is not simply about corporate social policies and programs that might (or might not) be adopted in the same vein as CSR. Rather, we argue that the effective functioning of [individual] liberal citizenship has been sufficiently affected by the corporate uptake of government functions to render corporate involvement in ‘citizenship’ a largely unavoidable occurrence. (Matten and Crane, 2005: 170)

The same line of analysis is also popular among the growing pro-business analysts writing in outlets such as the aforementioned HBR. Porter and Kramer’s (2011) idea of creating ‘shared value’ is a good example. They suggest that social goods and economic viability do not have to contradict each other, and can be aligned within market economies if the right processes (and corporate cultures) are fostered. As they argue, ‘the purpose of the corporation must be redefined as creating shared value, not just profit per se. This will drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy. It will also reshape capitalism and its relationship to society. Perhaps most important of all, learning how to create shared value is our best chance to legitimize business again’ (Porter and Kramer, 2011: 5).

For many, the problem with this dominant line of CSR thinking is that it reminds them of the wonderful quip by Gandhi when asked what he thought about British civilization: ‘I think it would be a good idea’. In other words, the ideology of ‘shared value’ is wonderful in itself, but so far removed from the structural principles of the for-profit multinational firm (as witnessed everyday), for example, that it is difficult to view such calls without some healthy skepticism.

And this takes us to the third area of CSR research, which is currently growing in the academy, especially in the context of Critical Management Studies and renewed calls to integrate critical political economy into organizational analysis (see Harney et al., 2008). This perspective views CSR practice (and much research to date) as somehow complicit with an unsustainable capitalist system. In this respect, CSR in the context of a broader political economy of the firm functions as a kind of smokescreen that buys time, and pre-empts statutory governmental intervention. As Roberts argues:

… my fear is that all this talk of ethics is just that—talk; new forms of corporate self-presentation that have no reference to or influence on what is practiced in the name of the corporation, beyond those associated with good public relations. In this form, corporate social responsibility is cheap and easy; a sort of prosthesis readily attached to the corporate body that repairs its appearance but in no way changes its actual conduct. (2003: 250)

And Roberts’ fears are shared by a growing number of analysts regarding the efficacy of much CSR practice, especially inside big business. In a number of critical essays, Banerjee (2006, 2008) too argues that close scrutiny of business ethics programmes in large multinationals tends to indicate that they play more of an ideological function than changing the dubious ethical standing of their financial motives. For example, the much-heralded notion of ‘consultation’ (celebrated in ‘stakeholder management’ theory and elsewhere) often becomes a tool to further single-minded corporate interests rather than introduce other voices. As Banerjee (2008) puts it when quoting (Tatz, 1982) in relation to mining companies ‘consulting’ with indigenous peoples in Australia, the Aborigines are the ‘receivers of consultation, that is … are from time to time talked to about the decision already arrived at’ (Banerjee, 2008: 64). Indeed, some have argued that given the years of CSR initiatives pursued by many large firms, the practical outcome has been negligible. Corruption, crime, cutting corners and suppressing the interests of less powerful parties remain the ‘name of the game’ despite all the talk to the contrary. In light of this disconnect between ideology and practice, Fleming and Jones (2013) even suggest that the discourse of CSR could even be simply abandoned. If there is a common theme that runs through the articles in this special issue it is a desire to understand more fully the ideological effects of the discourse of CSR.

The contributions

The first article ‘Why do corporate actors engage in pro-social behaviour’ by David Seidl, Dominik van Aaken and Violetta Splitter, begins the issue by exploring the potential of Bourdieu’s work for understanding CSR. In particular the article pursues an analysis of CSR developed through the key Bourdieusian concepts of capital, habitus and field including the field specific illusio. Like all practices pro-social practices are understood as attempts to acquire or transform capital—‘economic, social and cultural are transformed into symbolic capital if they are accorded positive recognition, esteem and honour by other actors’. The notion of habitus points to the largely tacit nature of pro-social behaviour and the way in which whether an organization engages in CSR depends on the individual dispositions of key individuals. Finally the Bourdieusian concept of field allows the pursuit of various forms of capital to be understood within the shifting network of relations that is its social context; in the case of CSR this might include members of other corporations, suppliers, customers, journalists, investors and government and non governmental organizations. The concept of illusio– unconsciously shared evaluations of different forms of capital—offers a way of understanding the ideological framing of CSR by dominant actors. The authors suggest that the particular strengths of such a Bourdieusian approach relative to extant work lies in its potential to illuminate the interplay between economic and non-economic motivations for engaging in CSR, the interplay of individual dispositions and more macro influences, as well as deterministic and voluntaristic aspects of human behaviour.

The next two articles focus on the aspirational nature of CSR but offer very different senses of how we might view this. In ‘CSR as aspirational talk’, Lars Christenson, Mette Morsing and Ole Thyssen set out to challenge the common critical assumption, that any gap between CSR talk and action should be taken as evidence of corporate deceit and pretense that can only be remedied through greater consistency between corporate words and deeds. Building on a performative view of language they argue that CSR talk is ‘essentially aspirational’ and that the gap between CSR talk and action is both unavoidable and itself a vital stimulus for organizational change; as performative, aspirational CSR provides ‘articulations of ideals, beliefs, and values and frameworks for decisions—in other words raw materials for (re)constructing the organization’. Drawing upon Brunson’s analysis, the article distinguishes between two different forms of hypocrisy—as duplicity and as aspiration. Whilst examples of CSR as duplicity are easy to find, Christensen et al. suggest that these should not lead critique to foreclose the positive potential for change created by aspirational CSR talk. In this latter form CSR idealizations play a vital motivational role for organizational change not just for others but for the organizational members themselves by facilitating both experimentation and deliberation. The article then argues that the public commitment of an organization to CSR ideals can be positive in so far as it create expectations that over time may prove binding upon the organization in the ways that they serve as a driving force for permanent effort. The article concludes by arguing for much closer theoretical and empirical attention to the ‘fragile borderlines’ between CSR talk and action.

The article by Dan Kärreman and Jana Costas ‘Conscience as control—managing employees through CSR’ can be read as an immediate response to the call by Christianson et al. It focuses on the internal organizational processes surrounding CSR programs and how they can be used as a form of ‘aspirational control’ through the promotion of an ‘idealized socially, ethically and environmentally responsible corporate self’. CSR, the authors suggest, provides a particularly compelling ‘fantasy of selfhood’ given its connotations of ethics, morality and responsibility with which staff easily identify and in relation to which they discipline the self. However, they see these CSR idealizations as serving not organizational change but the realization of managerial objectives. The article draws on empirical research in two global consulting firms both of which made much of their commitment to CSR in recruitment and operational management. The article traces three different staff responses to these CSR programs which the authors characterize in terms of believers, straddlers and cynics. The believers embrace the image of self offered by the firms’ CSR programs for either ethical or instrumental career/reputation purposes or both; CSR it is argued in this way soothes the guilt of a privileged life style and offsets the negative reputation of consultancy and consultants. Straddlers identify with the CSR ideal offered by the firms but question the companies’ instrumental and possibly insincere motives for promoting CSR. The cynics question both employees’ and the firms’ motives for engaging with CSR but nevertheless accept this as how things are. Importantly, the authors argue that as a form of aspirational control CSR is effective despite or indeed through staff ambivalence or cynicism. They also explore the political implications of CSR as a form of identity regulation and through the notion of ‘ethical sealing’ suggest that, in these cases at least, CSR allowed the companies to appropriate ethical issues in a way that marginalized other concerns, alternative articulations and forms of critique.

Carl Cederström and Michael Marinetto’s article ‘Corporate social responsibility a la the liberal communist’ offers an alternative way of unpicking and making sense of these confusing ideological effects of CSR. The article draws on Žižek’s discussion of the ‘liberal communist’ to explore what is argued to be a distinctively contemporary phenomenon; how some corporations currently ‘seek to restore the legitimacy of business and capitalism by engaging more proactively with various forms of social critique’. Žižek analyses the liberal communist in relation to three complementary characteristics which provide the structure for the article. The first involves a refusal to acknowledge any antagonistic relationship between capitalism and the social good; concerns for broader social and environmental issues are embraced on the basis that the corporation and market economy are the best and only way of meeting these. The second characteristic involves an emphasis on pragmatic over structural explanations and solutions to social and environmental issues; an emphasis which again forecloses consideration of more wide ranging political alternatives in favour of market solutions. The third characteristic involves an attitudinal shift which opposes hierarchy and bureaucracy and embraces the language of counter-cultural values and critique within the corporation. Cederström and Marinetto argue that Žižek’s ‘satirical construction’ of the liberal communist offers two important points of reflection in relation to CSR and its ideological effects. In line with Kärreman and Costas’ discussion of ‘ethical sealing’, Cederström and Marinetto suggest that CSR offers a ‘restricted and sealed truth, one that can only fit within the frame of capitalist reality’ and thereby supports a free-market ideology. Secondly, they suggest that the in-corporation of critique—making the corporation appear as if it is on the same side as social critics—serves only ‘to stabilize the foundational structures of capitalism by concentrating on aberrations and isolated problems’.

In their article ‘Incorporating citizens: corporate political engagement with climate change in Australia’ Christopher Wright, Daniel Nyberg and André Spicer seek to contribute to critical perspectives on corporate citizenship. Using recent climate change debates in Australia their article explores how corporations have sought to ‘capture’ or ‘incorporate’ broader social and citizenly activities that have previously existed outside of the realm of the corporation, and how this helps to reconfigure the idea of citizenship in a way that serves and supports corporate interests. In particular, they use the concept of hegemony—forging common identities and interests amongst disparate groups—to identify how new subject positions are constructed for citizens which are more amenable to corporate activities. They characterize the multiple corporate practices targeted at civil society in relation to climate change in Australia under the two broad categories of ‘campaigning’ and ‘exemplifying’—the latter involves presenting the corporation as a model citizen—and observe the ways in which ‘these practices enabled corporations to craft common identities and synchronize the interests of other groups with their own’. The article then identifies four (new) subject positions implied for ordinary citizens within these campaigning and exemplifying practices which they term ‘active constituent’, ‘responsible consumer’, ‘ethical employee’ and ‘ecopreneur’ each of which frames citizenship in a way that is consonant with corporate interests. Observing the divided nature of corporate engagement in the climate change debate in Australia, the article concludes that its point lies not so much in creating a hegemonic understanding of climate change as in allowing ‘corporations to defend corporate capitalism more generally as the central horizon in which issues can be imagined and dealt with’.

In the final article in this special issue—‘What comes around: the early 20th century American roots of legitimating corporate social responsibility’- Richard Marens places what he terms ‘explicit, managerial-centred corporate social responsibility’ into a longer historical context by tracing the success of large American corporations in the early 20th century in defending managerial autonomy by preventing unionization and regulation of their workplaces. The contrast between then and now, he suggests, was the centrality of the ‘labour question’ for the former, out of which emerged early forms of CSR as attempts to project legitimating claims to corporate responsibility. In the first section of the article Marens traces in rich detail the successful struggle for managerial autonomy in the period leading up to the Depression, including the often violent defeat of labour unions, which resulted in what he terms an ‘extreme form of employment-at-will’. Having won the war, however, the new large corporations faced demands by the establishment, voters and consumers to be ‘responsible victors’. Marens first describes the emergence of concerns for employee welfare and then describes how these were gradually generalized into claims to corporate responsibility that might be recognizable today. The internal development of purportedly enlightened personnel policies and practices came to be matched by external projections of corporate responsibility to consumers, the economy and community. Marens suggests that whilst these early manifestations of CSR were short circuited by the advent of the Depression, they reappeared in the late 1970s alongside new claims for greater managerial autonomy in the name of protecting global competitiveness. In relation to the current corporate version of explicit CSR Marens concludes that, as with the Depression, ‘legitimacy does not help a great deal in the absence of paying customers, a stable and trustworthy financial system and a government willing and able to spend to support its economy’.

Widening the CSR brief?

So a number of approaches and appreciations of CSR can be discerned at the present juncture, from those treating it as the solution to corporate colonization to those who argue it is part of the problem. Building on the above contributions in this special issue, we suggest that there still might be some constructive avenues of critical research that might take the discussion forward in useful ways.

Firstly, we suggest that CSR may still present progressive and constructive moments or opportunities for dialogue. While the critical perspective above is certainly convincing regarding the often cynical (and even disingenuous) nature of much CSR discourse, it may still allow for a mode of dialogue, exchange and debate that might not otherwise be afforded to those outside the ‘inner circle’ of business. We mean this in a different way to the argument forwarded by Scherer and Palazzo’s (2007) Habermasian approach. For they believe that an ‘ideal speech situation’ might be possible within the confines of the corporate sector and thus posit it as something that could happen without radically altering the corporate sector: to have one’s cake and eat it. We suggest that a more realistic appraisal of such communication is required, which is not to say that productive dialogue remains impossible.

If it is true that a good deal of CSR ideology attempts to shut down productive and imaginative alternatives (to neoliberal capitalism, for example), then how might it be leveraged to forge some kind of ongoing exchange regarding the ethicality of business? Roberts (2003) makes the case that while it is easy to demonstrate the double standards of much CSR in practice, as sentient humans we find ourselves unavoidably and inescapably caught up in the assignation of ‘responsibility for my neighbour’. He draws upon Levinas’ phenomenological philosophy of responsibility to ‘point to the potential of dialogue across the corporate boundary with those most vulnerable to its ”unintended” social and environmental affects, as a means to counter to corporate ignorance’. The talk of business ethics might be very important for at least creating the potential for this to occur—indeed, has not this very special issue benefited from CSR talk to begin our critical inquiry? The myriad of political possibilities that the very presence of an ethical discourse in the firm might broach might pave the way for extended debate and discourse.

This draws us to the second area that might widen the search for CSR in business and society today. What kind of talk? One of the key political weaknesses of CSR in practice, it could be argued, is that it is not really meant to be taken seriously. An in built cynical distance is often functioning in which we are invited to enter the discourse of the ‘ethical firm’, ‘stakeholder democracy’ and the ‘triple bottom line’, but maintain a psychological distance. We feel ethical and responsible (say, when buying the carbon offsetting option when booking another budget airline journey) but continue to act as if we are not. This is what Žižek (1989) calls cynical ideology, and one might argue that CSR is rife with this element, especially when it enters the board rooms of large multinational enterprises.

This insight opens an interesting opportunity around the kind of dialogue one might instigate within the CSR framework. In his wonderful Rules for Radicals (1971), Saul Alinsky described one of the most pertinent tactics that the weak might deploy against a powerful adversary: ‘make the enemy live up to their own book rules. That will always kill them’ (Alinsky, 1971: 128). Similarly, in order to sidestep the cynical distance that pre-empts serious adoption, one might instead over-identify with the claims of corporate CSR advocates. If we take the claims, aspiration and social message of many CSR policies in the corporate and governmental sector too seriously, too far, as if they were actually genuine co-ordinates for reforming business and society, a powerful tool of criticism and practical change might emerge. For example, what if this statement by a large petroleum company was not taken ‘with a grain of salt’ or bracketed from actual everyday business, but adhered to, word for word?

Contributing to sustainable development is integral to the way we do business. As we work to help meet the world’s growing energy needs we aim to bring benefits to local communities and reduce impacts of our operations, including tackling greenhouse gas emissions. We look after our people and our core values of honesty, integrity and respect for people have been laid out in the Shell General Business Principles for over 30 years.

Obviously, if taken literally, the proclamations made above would require a fundamental reorganization of the operating protocols of the firm, so much so that it would look like an entirely different institutional entity. Moreover, and perhaps just as importantly, it would be very difficult for a large petroleum company to reject the call to live up to its own standards without undermining its own ideological system. So rather than rejecting much CSR discourse as a smokescreen, might it not present an opportunity to deepen the critique of unethical behaviour using the very verbiage of big business?

A good example of how this might be so was the interventions against a number of European airlines that colluded with governments to deport so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ (see autonome a.f.r.k.a groupe, 2002). One major German airline was targeted by the anti-racist collective ‘kein mensch ist illegal’. Instead of falling into the trap of playing into the cynical distance noted above, they took a different tack. The group prepared overly positive leaflets with the company’s colours/logos, stating that the company was very concerned for its customer’s comfort and safety, but simply could not restrain its ‘prisoners’ in handcuffs and gags. On the surface, the leaflets were a gushing celebration of the company’s honesty and humanitarian concern for its ‘prisoners’. But they in fact revealed the truthful ‘hidden reverse’ of such compassionate corporate behaviour and the company’s complicity with a racist policy. As noted by a commentator, the result was that ‘the company found itself in a bind: it couldn’t deny that it was carrying out the deportations, and that this inconvenienced customers, but it was offering them no compensation’ (autonome a.f.r.k.a groupe, 2002: 167–168).

This brings us to the nub of the problem, which is a third area that might widen the CSR domain. Who is to speak? Or more accurately, who is allowed to speak? So often it is the corporation that does most of the talking regarding CSR, and the opportunity to take issue with it is left to the dusty journals of the academy (and some authors are not even safe there, with journals like Organization and Environment deemed too critical by its private owners, replacing its editors and rebranding the periodical as a ‘sustainable management’ journal [see ‘Notes From the Editors’, Monthly Review, (2012)]. Guerrilla communication groups like the one mentioned above might be effective, but would we not want to see something more sustainable, systematic and accessible to the general public, workers and other stakeholders?

If the tactic of over-identifying with CSR is to work, then we must also raise questions outside of CSR’s primary domain, involving issues around radical democratization of the corporate sphere (since so much CSR takes the firm’s existence for granted). This is not something CSR can achieve on its own. Indeed, according to critics this has been actively frustrated in much CSR discourse. In other words, if CSR is to become a successful way of changing the unethical practices of the capitalist firm, then it requires wider political supports beyond itself (including direct democratic forums, worker involvement in strategic issues, open and transparent media regarding corporate activities, etc.). Perhaps here we reach the natural limits of the CSR area in both theory and practice?