The Debate over Corporate Social Responsibility

by May, Steven K.; Cheney, George; Roper, Juliet

• ISBN13: 9780195178838
• ISBN10: 0195178831
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-04-12
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Should business strive to be socially responsible, and if so, how? The Debate over Corporate Social Responsibility updates and broadens the discussion of these questions by bringing together in one volume a variety of practical and theoretical perspectives on corporate social responsibility. It is perhaps the single most comprehensive volume available on the question of just how "social" business ought to be. The volume includes contributions from the fields of communication, business, law, sociology, political science, economics, accounting, and environmental studies. Moreover, it draws from experiences and examples from around the world, including but not limited to recent corporate scandals and controversies in the U.S. and Europe. A number of the chapters examine closely the basic assumptions underlying the philosophy of socially responsible business. Other chapters speak to the practical challenges and possibilities for corporate social responsiblilty in the twenty-first century. One of the most distinctive features of the book is its coverage of the very ways that the issue of corporate social responsibility has been defined, shaped, and discussed in the past four decades. That is, the editors and many of the authors are attuned to the persuasive strategies and formulations used to talk about socially responsible business, and demonstrate why the talk matters. For example, the book offers a careful analysis of how certain values have become associated with the business enterprise and how particular economic and political positions have been established by and for business. This book will be of great interest to scholars, business leaders, graduate students, and others interested in the contours of the debate over what role large-scale corporate commerce should take in the future of the industrialized world.

Author Biography

Steve May is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also currently a Leadership Fellow at the Institute for the Arts and the Humanities and an Ethics Fellow at the Parr Ethics Center, and serves as an ethics researcher and consultant for the Ethics at Work program at Duke University's Kenan Institute for Ethics. His most recent books include Case Studies in Organizational Communication: Ethical Perspectives and Practices and Engaging Organizational Communication Theory and Research: Multiple Perspectives. He is a past forum editor of Management Communication Quarterly.
George Cheney is Pforessor of Communication at the University of Utah, where he also serves as Director of Peace and Conflict Studies. In addition, he is Adjunct Professor of Management Communication at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Cheney has authored, co-authored, or co-edited five books and he had published over 75 journal articles and book chapters. Recognized for both teaching and research, he has lectured, conducted research, and consulted in Western Europe and Latin America, in addition to the United States and New Zealand. He is a past chair of the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association and is a reviews editor for Organization.
Juliet Roper is Professor of Management Communication at the Waikato Management School, University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. She is currently the Sustainability Convenor for the Waikato Management School and representative for the school's membership in the European Academy of Business in Society (EABIS). She is co-author of The Politics of Representation: Election Campaigning and Proportional Representation, and has published articles in many journals, including the Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Review, the Journal of Applied Communication Research,and the Journal of Public Affairs and Corporate Governance.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. v
Contributors	p. xiii
Overview	p. 3
Introduction
Why Corporate Social Responsibility: Why Now? How?	p. 15
A New Generation of Global Corporate Social Responsibility	p. 30
Progressing from Corporate Social Responsibility to Brand Integrity	p. 45
Cases and Contexts
Facing Corporate Power	p. 59
Corporate Citizenship: The Dark-Side Paradoxes of Success	p. 74
Corporate Social Responsibility in Scandinavia: A Turn Toward the Business Case?	p. 87
Corporate Social Responsibility in Asia: A Confucian Context	p. 105
Corporate Social Responsibility and Public Relations: Perceptions and Practices in Singapore	p. 119
Corporate Social Responsibility in Mexico: An Approximation from the Point of View of Communication	p. 135
Legal Perspectives
Legal Versus Ethical Arguments: Contexts for Corporate Social Responsibility	p. 155
Corporate Deception and Fraud: The Case for an Ethical Apologia	p. 167
Regulation: Government, Business, and the Self in the United States	p. 177
Can Corporate Personhood Be Socially Responsible?	p. 190
Economic Perspectives
How to Read Milton Friedman: Corporate Social Responsibility and Today's Capitalisms	p. 207
Corporate Social Responsibility as Oxymoron: Universalization and Exploitation at Boeing	p. 219
Toward an Accounting for Sustainability: A New Zealand View	p. 232
Consumer Activism and Corporate Social Responsibility: How Strong a Connection?	p. 241
Social Perspectives
Corporate Governance, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Communication	p. 267
Corporate and Institutional Responses to the Challenge of HIV/AIDS: The Case of South Africa	p. 279
Business, Society, and Impacts on Indigenous Peoples	p. 292
Activism, Risk, and Communicational Politics: Nike and the Sweatshop Problem	p. 305
Environmental Perspectives
Corporate Environmentalism	p. 321
Greening of Corporations? Eco-talk and the Emerging Social Imaginary of Sustainable Development	p. 336
Discourses of Sustainability in Today's Public Sphere	p. 351
Green Marketing and Advertising	p. 365
Sustainable Development Discourse and the Global Economy: Promoting Responsibility, Containing Change	p. 379
The Behavior of Corporate Species in Ecosystems and Their Roles in Environmental Change	p. 391
Commentary on Corporate Social Responsibility: The Contributions of Communication and Other Perspectives
Is Sustainability Sustainable? Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainable Business, and Management Fashion	p. 405
Corporate Social Responsibility and Public Policy Making	p. 417
The Case of the Subaltern Public: A Postcolonial Investigation of Corporate Social Responsibility's (O)Missions	p. 438
The Discourse of Corporate Social Responsibility: Postmodern Remarks	p. 448
Corporate Social Responsibility/Corporate Moral Responsibility: Is There a Difference and the Difference It Makes	p. 459
Index	p. 475
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