Heterodox Critiques of Corporate Social Responsibility

Tae-Hee Jo ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is in vogue in recent times. It has been widely received by socially concerned people in business, academia, and NGOs that CSR would lend support to the improvement in social welfare and the protection of environment. However, the question that whether corporations are socially responsible or corporations should behave responsibly is beside the point from the heterodox economic perspective. The proper question to pose is how corporations manipulate the social by means of CSR. Drawing upon the heterodox theory of the business enterprise along with the social provisioning perspective, I argue that the business corporation has always acted in a socially responsible manner by generating ethical-political-cultural values, norms, and beliefs that legitimize whatever the business corporation does is socially responsible. In this respect, CSR is a market-based means to control the social provisioning process by way of creating an illusionary image of corporations and, thereby, hiding the ruthless acquisitive drive and the exploitation of human beings and nature.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility; social provisioning process; the business enterprise; social welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B50 D21 D60 G30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-12-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-soc
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