Article2014

Who has been regulating whom, business or society? The mid-20th-century institutionalization of 'corporate responsibility' in the USA

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98 citations0/0 files storedSocio-Economic Review

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Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting Management and Organizational Studies Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability

Abstract

The article provides a historical-sociological perspective on contemporary, globalized ‘corporate responsibility’ (CR) by exploring a critical moment in the evolution of this institution, in mid-20th-century USA. CR was devised by the corporate capitalist elite, broadly defined, as an instrument for pre-empting governmental intervention. Corporations responded to surging public expectations for governmental—not corporate—assumption of social responsibility. In deploying CR practices, they would strategically enable the creation of the latter at the expense of the former, thus redefining the parameters of business's role in society and, along with it, the societal division of regulatory labour in the direction of increasing privatization. It is hypothesized that present-day attempts at ‘civil regulation’ of corporations embody a script of interaction among companies, publics and states that was designed to secure corporate power rather than limit it. Synthesizing organizational neoinstitutionalism and elite theory, the article shows how elites can defend their position of power through engagement in a ‘defensive institutionalization project’, that is, a sophisticated modification of the system aimed at redefining the very perceptions and strategies of everyone involved.

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References

2007The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits 1986Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation 2008“Implicit” and “Explicit” CSR: A Conceptual Framework for a Comparative Understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility 1988Interest and Agency in Institutional Theory 1977The Role of Institutionalization in Cultural Persistence 1993Institutional conditions for diffusion 2012Industrial Dynamics: A Major Breakthrough for Decision Makers 1992The Antecedents of Deinstitutionalization

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2020The Elephant in the Room: The Nascent Research Agenda on Corporations, Social Responsibility, and Capitalism 2019Bound to Fail? Exploring the Systemic Pathologies of CSR and Their Implications for CSR Research 2022Rethinking corporate social responsibility under contemporary capitalism: Five ways to reinvent CSR 2018Corporate Social Responsibility and Labour Standards: Bridging Business Management and Employment Relations Perspectives 2017Government Regulation of International Corporate Social Responsibility in the US and the UK: How Domestic Institutions Shape Mandatory and Supportive Initiatives

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