Corporate Social Illusion: Foxes Minding the Geese

Convenors: 

David Jacobs, labor-democracy@EARTHLINK.NET,

Richard Pin richard.pin@iep.univ-lille2.fr

 

The joint-stock corporation by law is obliged to attend to its stockholders and maximize profits. Successive waves of militant workers, consumers, politicians and other citizens have challenged the corporation for its misdeeds, and reformers and revolutionaries have proposed radical changes in its structure. Public ownership, workers control, excess profits taxes, new charters of incorporation, unionization, and codetermination are among the initiatives that critics have developed to curb the profit-induced damage the corporation generates.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a curious alternative to structural reform, "corporate social responsibility" (CSR) entered the public debate. In many of its formulations, CSR is a program of voluntary initiatives, conceived by management, implemented by management, and evaluated by management, to counter negative impacts on the community. The underlying assumption is that corporations will discipline and socialize themselves (Bowen, 1953; Frederick, 1960; Ackerman, 1973).

Mainstream management scholarship validates CSR by providing studies of the correlation of financial performance with "social performance." (Davis, 1960; Cochran & Wood, 1984) However, maximizing profits through the casualization of employees and the externalization of costs has its own constituency among managers (Friedman, 1970).

CSR can be contrasted with social innovations that represent a rupture with the traditional corporation (Holt, 1971; Drucker, 1987). In these cases, enterprises have social anchors that may act as a brake on ruthless cost cutting (Prietto-Carron & al., 2006; Newell, 2007). Temporary these phenomena may be, buffeted by global market forces, these moments of social responsibility suggest the potential of structural reform.

What are the conditions for the emergence of social innovations, capable of meeting social needs?

How do some organizational forms (cooperatives, mutual companies, associations…) integrate social concerns differently than joint-stock corporations?

Can citizens, NGOs, and the state reconfigure the corporation in a way that marries effectiveness and social justice?

What evidence is there that CSR was intended as a palliative, an invention lacking substance (Bishop, 2004), to forestall real change?
 

Paper proposals are invited from all disciplines that critically examine the paradoxical relationships between corporations and corporate social responsibility. Interest is welcomed both in terms of a critical assessment of contemporary business practice, as well as the future in teaching corporate social responsibility, ethic, sustainable development or social innovation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ackerman R.W., "How Companies Respond to Social Demands," Harvard Business Review, July-August 1973, pp. 88-98.

Bishop M., “An Opposite view to CSR”, 5^th Annual Social Enterprise Conference, March 2004, Harvard Business School.

Bowen H.R., Social Responsibilities of the Businessman (New York: Harper, 1953).

Cochran R.A. and Wood P.L., "Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance," Academy of Management Journal, 27 (1984): 42-56.

Davis K., "Can Business Afford to Ignore Social Responsibilities?" California Management Review, Spring 1960, pp. 70-76.

Drucker, P. F., “Social Innovation -- Management's New Dimension”, Long Range Planning, Dec87, Vol. 20 Issue 6, p29-34.

Frederick W.C., "The Growing Concern Over Business Responsibility," California Management Review, Summer 1960, p. 60.

Friedman M., “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”, New York Times Magazine, Sept. 13, 1970, pp. 32-33, 122-126.

Holt K., “Social Innovations in Organizations”, International Studies of Management & Organization, Fall71, Vol. 1 Issue 3, p235-252.

Newell P., “Citizenship, accountability and community: the limits of the CSR agenda”, International Affairs, May2005, Vol. 81 Issue 3, p 541-557.

Prieto-Carron M., Lund-Thomsen P., Chan A., Muro A., Bhushan C., “Critical perspectives on CSR and development: what we know, what we don’t know, and what we need to know”, International Affairs, Oct. 2006, pp. 12-14.

The motivation for the workshop is simple: neither the PDW nor the main program events at the AOM give us enough opportunity to engage in in-depth discussion of papers in critical management studies. So the workshop will be organized as a series of parallel streams (working groups). Each stream will consist of people who have contributed papers on a well-defined topic (perhaps with some invited discussants), and the group will work together over the course of the day-and-a-half, going around the room discussing the papers in turn. In order to maximize discussion, authors will not present their own papers, but rather participants will be asked to present and discuss each others' papers. We will also arrange a couple of plenary sessions and some social time where all the participants come together.

We are yet to finalize the cost of the workshop, but based on present estimates, we anticipate that the workshop will cost between $400 and $550 for each participant, depending on whether they choose to stay for two nights or three, and whether they choose single or double rooms.  The fee will include meals (lunch and dinner on 7th and all 3 meals on 8th).  We will finalize the details quickly on this front.

If you wish to be part of this stream, please submit a 250 word abstract to labor-democracy@EARTHLINK.NET and richard.pin@iep.univ-lille2.fr by January 15^th, 2008.  Please note that submissions can be concurrently on review at the regular AOM 2008 conference as well.  The submission of an abstract constitutes a good-faith agreement to submit a full paper for the stream by June 1, 2008 if the paper is accepted.  The final paper should be less than 8000 words in length.

NEW DATES (as of 30 December 2007)