Taboos in Corporate Social Responsibility Discourse

Abstract

Corporations today have been engineered by CEOs and other business advocates to look increasingly green and responsible. However, alarming cases such as Enron, Parmalat and Worldcom bear witness that a belief in corporate goodness is still nothing other than naïve. Although many scholars seemingly recognize this, they still avoid touching on the most sensitive and problematic issues, the taboos. As a consequence, discussion of important though problematic topics is often stifled. The article identifies three ‘grand’ taboos of CSR discourse and explicitly raises them for discussion. They are the taboos of amoral business, continuous economic growth, and the political nature of CSR. It is suggested that CSR can only be as advanced as its taboos. The critical potential of the field remains underdeveloped as a consequence of the taboos, and in many cases the CSR discourse merely produces alluring but empty rhetoric about sustainability and responsible business. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007taboo, CSR, corporate greening, growth, politics, amoral,

A Paradox Perspective on Corporate Sustainability: Descriptive, Instrumental, and Normative Aspects

“…Whereas the existence of inherent tensions in corporate sustainability, and in related concepts such as corporate social responsibility, has been highlighted by numerous authors for quite some time (Aram 1989;Kaptein and Wempe 2001;Vilanova et al 2009;Margolis and Walsh 2003;Calton and Payne 2003;Kallio 2007;Haffar and Searcy 2015;Van der Byl and Slawinski 2015), only recently has paradox theory been used as a theoretical lens to conceptualize corporate sustainability Gao and Bansal 2013;Slawinski and Bansal 2015). Paradox theory in management posits that paradoxes, i.e., ''persistent contradiction between interdependent elements'' (Schad et al 2016, p. 6), are ubiquitous phenomena in organizations, resulting in tensions between various aspects that ''seem logical in isolation but absurd and irrational when appearing simultaneously'' (Lewis 2000, p. 760).…”

Signposts or Weathervanes? The Curious Case of Corporate Social Responsibility and Conflict Minerals

“…Rather than more narrow contract responsibility the latter calls for full responsibility for the human rights impacts that are linked to operations upstreaming the value chain (SchrempfStirling et al 2012;Reinecke and Ansari 2015). Here we join a conversation in the Journal of Business Ethics on the responsibilities of the corporate citizen in developing contexts (Agbiboa 2012;Janssen et al 2013;Rotter et al 2013), CSR ''rhetoric'' (Driver 2006;Kallio 2007;Sethi 2014) and public good (Carcello 2009;Morrell and Clark 2010;O'Brien 2009). Our specific contribution to this debate is to highlight the wavering nature of rhetoric on both sides of the divide.…”

“…First, it shows that to understand corporate responsibility, we not only need an account of the responsible corporation, we also need empirical detail on how that account itself is mobilized as a discursive resource. This contributes to an ongoing debate in the Journal of Business Ethics in relation to whether CSR is ''empty rhetoric'' (Driver 2006;Kallio 2007;Sethi 2014). Second, explaining corporate responsibility in the context of conflict minerals is a rich contribution to debate on how purportedly neutral accounting practices (relating to corporate disclosure) are heavily imbued with ethical reasoning.…”

“…In turn, this illustrates how CSR can become ''empty rhetoric'' (Driver 2006;Kallio 2007;Sethi 2014), where superficial changes merely serve to reproduce existing inequalities and entrench power relations. However, it should also be recognized that any such hegemony is established on multiple levels.…”

Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics in discourse analysis

“…Como objeto, a referência primeira é aquela à conhecida dualidade "discurso versus prática" (como por exemplo, nos trabalhos de Woodman, 2008;Kallio, 2007;Brandão, 2006), invariavelmente dada como resultado de investigações empíricas que apontam desarmonias e incoerências da prática observada frente a um discurso organizacional, ou do resultado do desembaraçar de um sistema simbólico que revela um ethos distante daquele do 'dito enquanto tal' da organização.…”