Corporate Social Responsibility
Enviado por Lauranatalia96 • 8 de Abril de 2015 • Informes • 11.289 Palabras (46 Páginas) • 163 Visitas
Corporate Social Responsibility
Theories: Mapping the Territory
Elisabet Garriga,
Dome`nec Mele´
ABSTRACT. The Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) field presents not only a landscape of theories but
also a proliferation of approaches, which are controversial,
complex and unclear. This article tries to clarify the situation,
‘‘mapping the territory’’ by classifying the main
CSR theories and related approaches in four groups: (1)
instrumental theories, in which the corporation is seen as
only an instrument for wealth creation, and its social
activities are only a means to achieve economic results; (2)
political theories, which concern themselves with the
power of corporations in society and a responsible use of
this power in the political arena; (3) integrative theories,
in which the corporation is focused on the satisfaction of
social demands; and (4) ethical theories, based on ethical
responsibilities of corporations to society. In practice,
each CSR theory presents four dimensions related to
profits, political performance, social demands and ethical
values. The findings suggest the necessity to develop a
new theory on the business and society relationship,
which should integrate these four dimensions.
KEY WORDS: corporate social responsibility, corporate
responsiveness, corporate citizenship, stakeholder manage
ment, corporate social performance, issues management,
sustainable development, the common good
Introduction
Since the second half of the 20th century a long
debate on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has
been taking place. In 1953, Bowen (1953) wrote the
seminal book Social Responsibilities of the Businessman.
Since then there has been a shift in terminology from
the social responsibility of business to CSR. Additionally,
this field has grown significantly and today
contains a great proliferation of theories, approaches
and terminologies. Society and business, social issues
management, public policy and business, stakeholder
management, corporate accountability are just some
of the terms used to describe the phenomena related
to corporate responsibility in society. Recently, renewed
interest for corporate social responsibilities
and new alternative concepts have been proposed,
including corporate citizenship and corporate sustainability.
Some scholars have compared these new
concepts with the classic notion of CSR (see van
Marrewijk, 2003 for corporate sustainability; and
Matten et al., 2003 and Wood and Lodgson, 2002
for corporate citizenship).
Furthermore, some theories combine different
approaches and use the same terminology with different
meanings. This problem is an old one. It was
30 years ago that Votaw wrote: ‘‘corporate social
responsibility means something, but not always the
Elisabet Garriga is a PhD student in Management at IESE
Business School, University of Navarra, Spain. She holds a
degree in Philosophy and another in Economics from the
University of Barcelona, Spain. She has taught Business
Ethics at the University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, for the
International Education of Students (IES), a consortium
comprised of more than 120 leading US colleges and universities.
Her current research focuses on the concept and
implementation of Corporate Social Responsibilities. She also
has interest in organizational learning, entrepreneurship and
innovation.
Dome`nec Mele´ is Professor and Director of the Department of
Business Ethics at IESE Business School, University of
Navarra, Spain and chairs the bi-annual ‘‘International
Symposium on Ethics, Business and Society’’ held by IESE.
He has a Doctorate in Industrial Engineering from the
Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain (1974) and
another in Theology from the University of Navarra (1983).
He has been working in the business ethics field since 1986
and has been a member of EBEN from its beginnings. He is
author of three books on economic and business ethics (in
Spanish) and has edited eight books (in Spanish), which
include different topics on business ethics. In addition, he has
written 20 study cases (IESE
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