From social gospel to CSR: Was corporate social responsibility ever radical?

Abstract

Critics lament that corporate social responsibility has failed to significantly change business practices and that it became ‘de-radicalized’ once embraced by corporate business management. Using historical analysis, this article reevaluates this de-radicalization thesis, questioning whether corporate social responsibility ever was as inherently radical as the thesis assumes. The article demonstrates that early corporate social responsibility was already invested with a strategy of pragmatism, an investment that traces back to a group of late 19th and early 20th century American Christian reformists, also known as the social gospel movement. They promised that industrialism would unify Christian ethics and capitalist production, thereby reconciling the conflict between profitseeking and social solidarity. The discourse they advanced already contained what would later become key corporate social responsibility components, including (1) the notion of ethical businessmen, (2) the corporation as a morally conscious being and (3) collaboration as the pathway to ‘industrial peace’. Theoretically, the analysis finds inspiration in Luc Boltanski’s and Eve Chiapello’s thesis on modern capitalism’s capacity to assimilate the critiques it faces, supplemented by Michel Foucault’s fine-grained analyses of the transformation and ‘tactical polyvalence’ of discourse. The two positions complement each other in their assumptions regarding the dialectical relationship between capitalism/critique (Boltanski and Chiapello) and power/resistance (Foucault). Tracing the origins of corporate social responsibility’s pragmatism further back in time than the conventional starting point in the 1950s casts new light on the de-radicalization thesis. In particular, corporate social responsibility emphasizes personal ethics as the key to industrial peace, a social gospel legacy that has steered corporate social responsibility away from demands that fundamentally challenge corporate capitalism.

Guest Editors’ Introduction to Special Issue: ‘Foucault, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Corporate Sustainability’

“…The aspirations linked to the CSR concept implied that corporate responsibility should involve economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic dimensions, generating major changes in corporations' societal role. However, critical observers conclude that the original aspirations of the CSR concept for substantial changes in business practices have largely been disappointed [15][16][17][18]. For instance, Richard Marens [16] notes that early CSR had 'the labor question' as its main concern, centering on issues such as income distribution, regulation for the betterment of workers' conditions, and the protection of collective bargaining.…”

“…In line with this account, Shamir [15] argued that CSR's original, radical potential was wiped out in step with its appropriation by mainstream corporate business management; a process through which CSR has become 'de-radicalized'. Questioning the claim of a loss of CSR's 'original' progressiveness, Kristian Steensen and Kaspar Villadsen [18] use Foucault's genealogy to explore CSR's historical inspiration from Christian social ethics of the late 19th and early 20th century. Given this inspiration, argue Steensen and Villadsen [18] (p. 924), the CSR concept could hardly fundamentally challenge corporate capitalism, as it emphasized personal ethics and 'brotherly love' as the key to industrial peace-a social gospel legacy, which helped steer the discourse on corporations' social responsibility away from fundamental challenges to corporate capitalism.…”

Veracity Dalam Pelaporan Nonkeuangan Proyek Komunitas

“…Langkah 2 mengidentifikasi pola struktural narasi ya itu melalui struktur modal atau modalitas (prosedur tertentu) menurut Greimas (1966) yang meliputi tindakan/ide (tindakan itu sendiri), kompetensi (apa yang diperlukan untuk mencapai tindakan atau wanting todo atau knowinghowtodo), kinerja (aktualisasi dari tindakan atau havingtodo atau beingabletodo), manipulasi (kekuatan yang memaksa atau causingtodo). Modalitas mengacu pada struktur untuk mengevalua si kondisi peristiwa yang menjadi perhatian subjek (Marcelli, 2020), yaitu apa yang dilakukan dan dikerjakan subjek dalam narasi (Steensen & Villadsen, 2020) dan apakah ia dibangun berdasarkan realitas atau tidak. Langkah 3 menguji secara dialogikal setiap topik atau unit analisis dengan menerapkan ke-empat proposisi yang diajukan untuk menentukan karakteristik kebenaran setiap narasi melalui pernyataan dalam istilah meta "ada", "tidak ada", "tampak", dan "tidak tampak" yang penentuannya dapat dijelaskan dari sudut pandang nilai-nilai rela sional yang dimilikinya.…”

Responsibilities towards places in a degrowth society: How firms can become more responsible via embracing deep ecology

“…Scholars and practitioners working with the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a broad sense are on a journey to understand how diverse firms and other organisations can act towards nature and in society differently, what acting differently could mean and how it could be manifested in practice (Matthews et al, forthcoming). While CSR itself is an ambiguous and complex concept with a long and conflicted history (Pedersen, 2006;Steensen & Villadsen, 2020), at the heart thereof is an assumption that firms exist within human societies and the natural environment and need to behave accordingly via assuming responsibilities for their actions in the natural and social world. Throughout this article, the term "firm" is used often.…”