Reconsidering Instrumental Corporate Social Responsibility through the Mafia Metaphor

Jean-Pascal Gond, Guido Palazzo and Kunal Basu

Business Ethics Quarterly, 2009, vol. 19, issue 1, 57-85

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the instrumental perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in practice and theory by relying on sociological analyses of a well known organization: the Italian Mafia. Legal businesses might share features of the Mafia, such as the propensity to exploit a governance vacuum in society, a strong organizational identity that demarcates the inside from the outside, and an extreme profit motive. Instrumental CSR practices have the power to accelerate a firm's transition to Mafia status through its own pathologies. The boundaries of such instrumentalism are explored and lessons for future CSR research derived, with specific emphasis on a firm's social and normative embeddedness, taking into account the inherent challenge of regulating corporate behaviour in the global economy.

Date: 2009
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