Ideologies of Corporate Responsibility: From Neoliberalism to “Varieties of Liberalism”

Abstract

Critical scholarship often presents corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a reflection or embodiment of neoliberalism. Against this sort of sweeping political characterization we argue that CSR can indeed be considered a liberal concept but that it embodies a “varieties of liberalism.” Building theoretically on the work of Michael Freeden on liberal languages, John Ruggie and Karl Polanyi on embedded forms of liberalism, and Michel Foucault on the distinction between classical liberalism and neoliberalism, we provide a conceptual treatment and mapping of the ideological positions that constitute the bulk of modern scholarly CSR debate. Thus, we distinguish between embedded liberalism, classical liberalism, neoliberalism, and re-embedded liberalism. We develop these four orientations in turn and show how they are engaged in “battles of ideas” over the meaning and scope of corporate responsibilities—and how they all remain relevant for an understanding of contemporary debates and developments in the field of CSR and corporate sustainability.

Beyond the Business Case for Responsible Artificial Intelligence: Strategic CSR in Light of Digital Washing and the Moral Human Argument

“…Indeed, it is relying on the moral arguments for CSR that responsible behaviors can be explained as authentic strategic orientation to stakeholders as persons, with their integrity, due respect for their wellbeing, freedom, psychological, physical, and spiritual integrity [75,76]. Such an understanding helps also in addressing virtuous models of stakeholders' engagement [77] as well as offering a suitable framework to debate the role of worldviews, system of beliefs, and ideologies-more than factual evidence-in leading executives to adopt CSR [78,79].…”

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

“…Finally, Steen Vallentin and David Murillo [37] have also recently offered a revisionist analysis of the CSR concept. Against the widely held claim in critical CSR scholarship that CSR is a crystallization of neoliberal ideology, Vallentin and Murillo lay out a more complex relationship between CSR and the liberal tradition.…”

Technology, Maturity, and Craft: Making Vinyl Records in the Digital Age

“…If being mature is facing the critical task of self-forming through continual analysis and experiment, then under one reading, this acquaints maturity with the neoliberal impress to expand the interventionist, competitive dynamic of productivity into all human action (Vallentin & Murillo, 2022): one is reminded, for example, of the controlled circulation of ambition and initiative that characterizes modern human resource management practices (Alakavuklar & Alamgir, 2018;Weiskopf & Munro, 2012). In the requirement to be creative, to innovate, and to make of oneself a project of productive improvement, the transgression of limits becomes itself a limit condition of systems of power and knowledge through which subjectification continues apace, inviting resistance whilst outflanking it (Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2019).…”