The Functions and Dysfunctions of Corporate Social Responsibility

doi:10.1017/9781139681025.023

a - The Functions and Dysfunctions of Corporate Social Responsibility

from 5 - Corporate Citizenship

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 March 2017

Steve Tombs

Edited by

Grietje Baars and

Andre Spicer

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Steve Tombs: Affiliation:
The Open University
Grietje Baars: Affiliation:
City University London
Andre Spicer: Affiliation:
City University London

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Summary

Introduction: The (Re)emergence of Corporate Social Responsibility

In 2008, as the UK government was in the midst of bailing out much of the financial services sector, Prime Minister Gordon Brown was keen to adopt the tone not of regulation nor criminalization, but of moral re-energization. In doing so, the hegemonic common sense, constructed over forty years, as regards regulation of corporate activity – that it represents a burden upon socially useful and socially productive corporate capacities – was remarkably undented by the financial collapse and international recession (Crouch, 2011). Thus, despite having overseen an unprecedented bailout of the banking system – a massive state subsidy funded by the taxpayer that effectively socialized the consequences of long-term, systematic private greed and possible (albeit never to be uncovered) illegality – the UK's Labour government underscored its commitment to the ‘free-market system’ and ‘light-touch regulation’, while again declaring its continued faith in business morality and corporate social responsibility:

Our government is pro-business; I believe in markets [and] entrepreneurship, and there are many areas of the economy that need the spur of more competition. But the events of the past months bear witness, more than anything in my lifetime, to one simple truth: markets need morals.

(Brown, 2008)

This initial political response to the financial crisis – to eschew the need for more regulation through a focus on morality as a lens through which economic actors could be seen as central to any solution rather than the problem – was soon to form the basis of a consensus. Specifically, while senior political figures frequently espoused the need for better regulation of the financial services sector, the nature of this regulation was hardly specified, while these claims ran alongside the mantra that regulation in general remained over-burdensome.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Corporation
A Critical, Multi-Disciplinary Handbook
, pp. 347 - 359

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139681025.023 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2017

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