Why corporate social responsibility should be popularised but not imposed

Abstract

This paper argues that although ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ is a morally attractive and intuitively appealing concept, it does not stand up to critical scrutiny. The attraction of CSR is powerful. Firms often choose to do more than merely meet their legal responsibilities to the community and ‘put something back’ into the communities in which they operate. Increasingly, the community is paying attention to such actions. Moreover, some believe business should do more. Yet these non-commercial activities may or may not reflect genuine philanthropy; they may be viewed cynically within the firm as public relations activities, serving as an image-building and reputation-enhancing mechanism. Moreover, the idea that the corporate world might universally apply some CSR template is hopelessly flawed. It is flawed theoretically because stakeholder theory offers business no guidance on setting priorities. It is flawed at a practical level because fundamental questions of legitimacy are ignored. This paper begins to explore some of these issues.