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The Political Perspective of Corporate Social Responsibility: A Critical Research Agenda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Glen Whelan
Glen Whelan*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Abstract:

I here advance a critical research agenda for the political perspective of corporate social responsibility (Political CSR). I argue that whilst the ‘Political’ CSR literature is notable for both its conceptual novelty and practical importance, its development has been hamstrung by four ambiguities, conflations and/or oversights. More positively, I argue that ‘Political’ CSR should be conceived as one potential form of globalization, and not as a consequence of ‘globalization’; that contemporary Western MNCs should be presumed to engage in CSR for instrumental reasons; that ‘Political’ CSR should be associated with a corresponding ‘political’ model of corporate governance; and that both a ‘Rawlsian’ and ‘Habermasian’ perspective of Political CSR are different from ‘Political’ CSR. In concluding, I use these four critiques to identify a number of areas within which increasingly robust and sophisticated positive and normative theories of Political CSR are required.

Keywords

corporate governanceglobalizationHabermasmultinational corporationsRawlspolitical corporate social responsibility
Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 709 - 737
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2012

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