The Myth of Corporate Social Responsibility

• Autor(a) principal: Crowther, David
• Data de Publicação: 2005
• Outros Autores: Abreu, Rute, David, Fátima
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10314/532
• topic: Accountability; Responsibility; Corporate Social Report; Agency Theory

Most corporations in the world are currently trying to distance themselves from the excesses and misbehaviours which have been manifest in recent years by those corporations which have been symbolised as rogue corporations. Many would consider that these corporations have however behaved no differently to most others and have merely been found out. Nevertheless the distancing of the rogues from the rest has led to a tremendous resurgence of interest in behaviour which has been classified as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). So, corporations are busy repackaging their behaviour as CSR and redesignating their spinmasters as Directors of CSR, for there is much evidence that little has changed in corporate behaviour except for this repackaging - the power of the semiotic being far more potent in the modem world that the power of actual action, and also obviating the need for such action. It is a central argument of this paper that CSR is a myth. So, the myth is founded on the arrogance of corporate managers, due to failures in Agency Theory; predicated in the ignorance of interpreters of corporate activity, dazzled by the power of the semiotic; and which legitimates corporate expropriation on an undiminished scale. This research will discuss the social contract between corporations and society; the perspective of stakeholder context; the dialectics of organisational performance; the Agency Theory and CSR; the measurement and evaluation of performance; and the accountability for performance. CSR involved a wide range of concepts, principals, methodologies and a large diversity of empirical analysis. The corporate excesses, which are starting to become disclosed and which are affecting large numbers of people, have raised an awareness of the social behaviours of corporations. This is one reason why the issue of corporate social responsibility has become a much more prominent feature of the corporate landscape. There are probably many reasons for the attention given to this phenomenon not least of which is the corporate excesses witnessed in recent years.