Models of the relationship of the firm to society

Business students' perception of corporate social responsibility: the United States, China, and India

“…In the United States, corporations have a greater impact on society and a private fi rm cannot be considered a 'private' entity anymore. The greater societal impact presents a powerful moral argument for US businesses to continue to take on social responsibility in noneconomic areas, such as corporate philanthropy (McMahon, 1986). Moreover, US businesses, in a more advanced economy, can better afford the luxury of being more philanthropically active than Chinese businesses.…”

Theorising Corporate Social Responsibility as an Essentially Contested Concept: Is a Definition Necessary?

“…Advocates of rights approaches would prefer to examine CSR from the perspective of rights and responsibilities that can be or should be assigned to business. Perhaps a more pragmatic approach to the search for an exemplar would be to use a more generalised reference point which can be derived from the fact that all CSR debates arise from issues concerning the dynamic relationship of corporation to society (McMahon, 1986;Werther and Chandler, 2006). Deriving an original exemplar or core from an ECC, is not always unambiguous however, it is possible to identify a link between the various conceptions of CSR by adopting a more generalised or refined approach as suggested by Rawls and Waldron. This link or core is derived from a range of issues which emerge from the dynamic relationship between corporation and society in different contexts and at different points in time and place.…”

“…In the most generalised of analytical formats, questions regarding the relationship between corporations and society have been analysed in the two-fold vein; that of rights approaches and power models (McMahon, 1986). On one hand, there are four rights approaches which include the rights arising from express contracts between the corporation and particular groups such as in the planned cities in the US; the rights or 'legitimate expectation' that could arise from implied contracts derived from continued association and practice (Garrett, 1966), the rights which could be inferred from social contracts which represent a perceived ideological social compact between corporation and society (Donaldson, 1983) and the rights arising from market contracts which merely reflect instrumental economic view of the corporation as supplier/seller and the society as consumer/ buyer (Friedman, 1970;Jensen, 2002).…”

Corporate Social Responsibility Theories: Mapping the Territory

“…These classifications, in spite of their valuable contribution, are quite limited in scope and, what is more, the nature of the relationship between business and society is rarely situated at the center of their discussion. This vision could be questioned as CSR seems to be a consequence of how this relationship is understood (Jones, 1983;McMahon, 1986;Preston, 1975;Wood, 1991b).…”