Accounting for the Benefits of Social Security and the Role of Business: Four Ideal Types and Their Different Heuristics

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility, heuristics, ideal types, (social) contract theory, social market economy, social security systems,

Corporate Social Responsibility: One Size Does Not Fit All. Collecting Evidence from Europe

“…16 There are many papers on the specifically European characters of CSR, especially when in contrast with the Anglo-Saxon or North American model (and also with other regional models: Asia, Africa, Latin America, Midttun et al (2006), and Welford (2003Welford ( , 2005. 17 We think that this claim is consistent with the viewpoints of De Geer et al (2010), Waldkirch et al (2010), and Berthoin Antal et al (2010). 18 The fact that the concept of azienda is broader than company (which is why we translate it as ''organization,'' even though this is not the term used by Rusconi and Signori) implies that CSR is not merely ''corporate'' or business, but concerns any human organization that coordinates individual actions for the achievement of objectives in which all members of the organization are interested, although the reasons why the wish them may be very different (Pérez López, 1993).…”

“…For that reason, the identification of a company's responsibilities regarding its internal and external stakeholders will be strongly conditioned and even determined by this context. As noted before, Waldkirch et al (2010) show how a businessman, Jakob Fugger II, started a housing program for the poor, influenced by the ideas of the time and by the demographical, social, and economical changes that were in progress. Businesses, as well as some civil society institutions (cooperatives, guilds, churches, and local governments) assumed welfare-state-like actions, as part of their social responsibility, long before any government assumed this task.…”

“…In Rusconi and Signori (2010), those prescriptors were the scholars; in Argandoña et al (2010a, b), they were the entrepreneurs, but undoubtedly influenced by scholars, philosophers, and political reformers; in Waldkirch et al (2010), this task was performed in the past by businessmen (Jakob Fugger II) and politicians (Bismarck, Erhard), probably together with other promoters. We will comment further on the changes in the promoters of CSR in Sweden that De Geer et al (2010) find in recent years.…”

“…Also, here a variety of drivers emerge: utopian philosophers and social critics, philanthropists, religious and ethical thinkers, political and business interests. And as in Waldkirch et al (2010) and De Geer et al (2010), the institutionalization of the welfare state profoundly changes the approach to these responsibilities, displacing it from the private to the public sector. The result is the creation of a set of economic, social, and political duties that will crystallize in responsibilities established by a national agreement among the social partners (employers, labor unions, and the state as guarantor).…”

“…In some countries, for example, Scandinavia, the term ''social'' is translated into ''societal,'' thus signaling a shift of focus to macro economic conditions (this is documented in several papers of this special issue: see Berthoin Antal et al, 2010;De Geer et al, 2010;Waldkirch et al, 2010). Matten and Moon (2008, p. 405) best highlighted the heterogeneity of the definitions of CSR in the following manner: ''CSR is an umbrella term overlapping with some, and being synonymous with other, conceptions of business-society relation.''…”