Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Why the Corporation?
- PART I DISCIPLINARY OVERVIEWS
- PART II INTERDISCIPLINARY THEMATIC CHAPTERS
- 1 The Evolution of the Corporate Form
- 2 The Multinational Corporate Group
- 3 The Financialization of the Corporation
- 4 Corporate Value Chains
- 5 Corporate Citizenship
- a The Functions and Dysfunctions of Corporate Social Responsibility
- b Reconsidering the Critical Corporate Social Responsibility Perspective through French Pragmatic Sociology: Subverting Corporate Do-Gooding for the Common Good?
- c Certification Schemes and Labelling as Corporate Governance: The Value of Silence
- 6 The Corporation and Crime
- 7 The Corporation and Ideology
- 8 Corporation and Communities
- 9 Corporations and Resistance
- 10 Alternatives to the Corporation
- Index
- References
a - The Functions and Dysfunctions of Corporate Social Responsibility
from 5 - Corporate Citizenship
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 March 2017
By
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Why the Corporation?
- PART I DISCIPLINARY OVERVIEWS
- PART II INTERDISCIPLINARY THEMATIC CHAPTERS
- 1 The Evolution of the Corporate Form
- 2 The Multinational Corporate Group
- 3 The Financialization of the Corporation
- 4 Corporate Value Chains
- 5 Corporate Citizenship
- a The Functions and Dysfunctions of Corporate Social Responsibility
- b Reconsidering the Critical Corporate Social Responsibility Perspective through French Pragmatic Sociology: Subverting Corporate Do-Gooding for the Common Good?
- c Certification Schemes and Labelling as Corporate Governance: The Value of Silence
- 6 The Corporation and Crime
- 7 The Corporation and Ideology
- 8 Corporation and Communities
- 9 Corporations and Resistance
- 10 Alternatives to the Corporation
- Index
- References
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 CorporationA Critical, Multi-Disciplinary Handbook, pp. 347 - 359Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2017
References
, and (1976) Corporate Social Responsiveness (Reston, VA: Reston Publishing).
(2011) ‘“Reform or Revolution?” Polanyian v. Marxian perspectives on the regulation of “the economic”’, Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly
62(4): 415–431.Google Scholar
(2012) Law(yers) Congealing Capitalism: on the (Im)Possibility of Restraining Business in Conflict through International Criminal Law, PhD thesis (London: UCL), http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1348306/1/1348306.pdf.
(2007) Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar).
, and (1974) The Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations (New York: Simon & Schuster).
, and (2013) ‘Examining the Ruggie Report: can voluntary guidelines tame global capitalism?’, Critical Criminology
21: 177–192.Google Scholar
(2008) ‘America has embraced the values of progress’, The Observer, 9 November, www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/09/barack-obama-gordon-brown.
, and (1990) ‘Stockholder and stakeholder interpretations of business's social role’, in and (eds.), Business Ethics: Readings and Cases in Corporate Morality (New York: McGraw Hill).
(1985) ‘Is business bluffing ethical?’, in and (eds.), Contemporary Issues in Business Ethics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth), 3–10.
(1979) ‘A three-dimensional conceptual model of corporate performance’, Academy of Management Review
4(4): 497–505.Google Scholar
(1979) ‘The export of hazard to developing countries’, International Journal of Health Services
9(4): 596–606.Google Scholar
Christian Aid (2004) Behind the Mask: The Real Face of Corporate Social Responsibility (London: Christian Aid).
, , , and (2009) ‘Introduction: state, power, crime’, in , , and , (eds.), State, Power, Crime (London: Sage), 1–19.CrossRef
Committee for Economic Development (1971) Social Responsibilities of Business Corporations (New York: CED).
Conservatives (2010a) Invitation to Join the Government of Britain: The Conservative Party Manifesto 2010 (London: Conservative Party).
Conservatives (2010b) ‘Regulation in the post-bureaucratic age: how to get rid of red tape and reform quangos – policy paper on better regulation’, www.conservatives.com/~/media/Files/Policy%20Documents/BetterRegulation.ashx.
Corporate Watch (2006) What's Wrong with Corporate Social Responsibility? (Oxford: Corporate Watch).
, (2011) The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism (Cambridge: Polity Press).
, , and (1977) Marx's Capital and Capitalism Today (London: Ro,utledge).
, and (1991) ‘The constituents of corporate responsibility: separate, but not separable, interests?’, Business Horizons
34(2): 74–78.Google Scholar
(2009) ‘“Sharing the proceeds of growth’: Conservative economic policy under David Cameron’, Political Quarterly
80(2).Google Scholar
, and (2013) The End of Corporate Social Responsibility: Crisis and Critique (London: Sage).
(2006) Corporation, Be Good! The Story of Corporate Social Responsibility (Indianapolis, IN: Dog Ear).
, and (1990) ‘Corporate governance: a stakeholder interpretation’, Journal of Behavioral Economics
19(4): 337–59.Google Scholar
, with , and (2011) ‘Stakeholder theory as a basis for capitalism’, in , , and (eds.) Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance (London: International Economic Association and Palgrave Press).
(1970) ‘The social responsibility of business is to make profits’ New York Times Magazine, 13 September 32–33, 122–126.
(2011) Building Stakeholder Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
(2012) ‘Regulating the Banks: what politicians used to say about the City’, The Telegraph, 4 July, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9376534/Regulating-the-banks-what-politicians-used-to-say-about-the-City.html.
, and (2013) ‘Post-political regulation: soft power and post-political visions in global governance’, Critical Sociology
39(3): 421–437.Google Scholar
, and (1988) The Global Political Economy (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf).
(1988) ‘The corporate social responsibility movement: the latest in the Maginot Lines to save capitalism’, Dalhousie Law Journal
11(2): 363–402.Google Scholar
(1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart).
, and (2004) Corporate Social Opportunity! Seven Steps to Make Corporate Social Responsibility Work for Your Business (Sheffield: Greenleaf Publishing).
, and (2009) ‘Updating the critical perspective on corporate social responsibility’, Sociology Compass
3(6): 937–48.Google Scholar
(1975) The Company and Its Responsibilities (London: Foundation for Business Responsibilities).
(2010) ‘Vince Cable is a neoliberal democrat’, The Guardian 4 June, www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/04/vince-cable-tory-songbook.
(2009) ‘Financialization and corporate governance’, Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly
60(1): 1–34.Google Scholar
, and (2009) ‘Corporate social responsibility in a neoliberal age’, in and (eds.), Corporate Social Responsibility and Regulatory Governance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
(ed.) (1985) The Export of Hazard. Transnational Corporations and Environmental Control Issues (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul).
(2011) ‘Liberal intellectuals and the politics of security’, in and (eds.), Anti-Security (Ottawa: Red Quill Books).
(1984) ‘Everywhere abroad but nowhere at home: the global corporation and the international state’, International Journal of the Sociology of Law
12: 85–103.Google Scholar
(1980) ‘The social movement against white-collar crime’, in and (eds.), Criminology Review Yearbook, vol. 2 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage) 161–184.
(2000) No Logo (New York: Picador).
(1991) ‘Foundational considerations in the corporate social responsibility debate’, Business Horizons
34(4): 9–18.Google Scholar
Labour Party (2010) The Labour Party Manifesto. A Future Fair for All (London: Labour Party).
(2005) Showing a strong front: corporate social responsibility and the “business case” in Britain’, Accounting Historians Journal
32(2): 145–171.Google Scholar
(1976 [1867]) Capital (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
, , and (eds.) (2007) The New Corporate Accountability: Corporate Social Responsibility and the Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 9–57.
, and (1987) ‘The space between laws: the problem of corporate crime in a transnational context’, Social Problems
34(1).Google Scholar
, and (2010) ‘Introduction to the themed issue. corporate power: agency, communication, influence and social policy’, Critical Social Policy
30(4): 459–471.Google Scholar
(2003) Imagining the State (Maidenhead: Open University Press).
(1993) ‘Corporate rationality as corporate crime’, Studies in Political Economy
40: 135–162.Google Scholar
, and (1997) ‘Hazards, law and class: contextualising the regulation of corporate crime’, Social and Legal Studies
6(1): 107–136.Google Scholar
, and (2006) ‘Strategy and society. the link between competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility’, Harvard Business Review. Redefining Corporate Social Responsibility
78–92.
(2006) The Corporation That Changed The World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational (London: Pluto).
(1996) Green Backlash: Global Subversion of the Environmental Movement (London: Routledge).
(2010) ‘Corporate and political strategy in relation to the private finance initiative in the UK’, Critical Social Policy
30(4): 519–540.Google Scholar
(1975) ‘Dimensions of corporate social responsibility’, California Management Review
17(3): 58–64.Google Scholar
(2004a) ‘Between self-regulation and the Alien Tort Claims Act: on the contested concept of corporate social responsibility’, Law and Society Review
38(4): 635–664.Google Scholar
(2004b) ‘The de-radicalisation of corporate social responsibility’, Critical Sociology
30(3): 1–21.Google Scholar
(2012) Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World (London: Vintage).
, and (2010) ‘Capitalist globalization, corporate social responsibility and social policy’, Critical Social Policy
30(4): 472–495.Google Scholar
(1991) ‘The regulatory dance: understanding reform processes in corporate crime’, International Journal of the Sociology of Law
19: 209–236.Google Scholar
(1993) Bad Business: Corporate Crime in Canada (Toronto: Nelson).
, and (2010) ‘The challenges of regulating powerful economic actors’, in and (eds.), European Developments in Corporate Criminal Liability (London: Routledge).
(2011) Lib Dem, Tory and Labour all in this together on financial regulation’, Left Foot Forward 24 January 24, www.leftfootforward.org/2011/01/lib-dem-tory-labour-all-in-this-together-on-financial-regulation.
(2014) ‘Crisis, what crisis? Regulation and the academic orthodoxy’, Howard Journal of Criminal Justice
54(1): 57–72.Google Scholar
(2015) Regulation after the crisis: social protection in an age of corporate barbarism? (Bristol: Policy Press).
, and (2009) ‘Corporate crime? Theft, violence and harm’, in , and (eds.) Crime: Local and Global (Cullompton: Willan/Open University Press) 137–172.
, and (2015) The Corporate Criminal: Why Corporations Should Be Abloished (London: Routledge).
, and (2008) ‘Much ado about nothing: a conceptual critique of corporate social responsibility’, in , , , and (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Social Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
(1977) Storm over the Multinationals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
(1986) The Bhopal Syndrome: Pesticide Manufacturing and the Third World (Penang: International Organization of Consumers Unions).
, and (2005) Corporate Social Responsibility: Integrating a Business and Societal Governance Perspective – The RARE Project's Approach (Berlin: Öko-Institut).
(2007) ‘The path to corporate responsibility’, Harvard Business Review Collection. Redefining Corporate Social Responsibility
1678: 34–44.Google Scholar