Corporate Responsibility: In the Dilemma between Fake and Trust?

Simon Fietze, Wenzel Matiaske and Roland Menges
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Simon Jebsen

management revue - Socio-Economic Studies, 2019, vol. 30, issue 2-3, 143-147

Abstract: The accusation of whitewashing accompanied the discussion about corporate social responsibility (CSR) since its inception the 1950s. That's not surprising. Ever since its beginnings in Scottish moral philosophy, economics did not expect the general good to be enhanced by the individual's social orientation, but rather by its self-interest, a concept less liable to disappointment, and the work of the invisible hand (Hirschman, 1977). The latter aims to promote a common goal that individuals have not intended. Following his famous text, Adam Smith (2007 [1786], p. 350) continues: ‘I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.’ The ‘mistrust’ of the ‘goodwill’ of the capitalist lives on in various streams such as Marxism, (neo-)liberalism or sociological system theory, to name but a few schools of thought. Marxists do not expect societal progress any more than (neo-)liberals from benevolent capitalists who, demand more taxable profits, instead of social responsibility, in the framework of the market organization of companies. System theorists find that ethical demands are hardly transferable directly into the economy code of payment/non-payment. Although Adam Smith (2007 [1786], p. 350) shared the view that the claim of public good orientation is ‘indeed, not very common among merchants’, but that ‘very few words need to be employed in dissuading them from it.’

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/0935-9915-2019-2-3-143 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nms:mamere:10.5771/0935-9915-2019-2-3-143

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, Waldseestraße 3-5, 76530 Baden-Baden, Germany
https://www.nomos-sh ... w.aspx?product=29288

DOI: 10.5771/0935-9915-2019-2-3-143

Access Statistics for this article

management revue - Socio-Economic Studies is currently edited by Simon Fietze, Wenzel Matiaske, Ina Aust, Matthias Baum, Susanne Gretzinger, Sylvia Rohlfer and Florian Schramm

More articles in management revue - Socio-Economic Studies from Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG ().