Steen Vallentin

Governmentality and the Politics of CSR

In this article we argue that an analytics of governmentality has an important contribution to make to the study of governmental approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Looking at developments within the EU, we see government emerging as an enabling and empowering facilitator that a) promotes a strategic understanding of CSR as a lever for economic competitiveness and growth and b) disregards regulatory measures in favour of liberal and indirect means of steering. We argue that the analytical vocabulary of governmentality makes it possible to address and problematize the indirect modes of power and governing that are prevalent in governmental approaches to CSR in general and in neoliberal modes of CSR governance in particular. Using EU and member states policy developments as an empirical backdrop, we provide a conceptual exploration of the prospects of applying governmentality to the study of the changing roles of government in CSR. We position our contribution within the critical literature on CSR as a political phenomenon.

Public Policies for Corporate Social Responsibility in Four Nordic Countries Harmony of Goals and Conflict of Means

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) was historically a business-oriented idea that companies should voluntarily improve their social and environmental practices. More recently, CSR has increasingly attracted governments’ attention, and is now promoted in public policy, especially in the European Union (EU). Conflicts can arise, however, when advanced welfare states introduce CSR into public policy. The reason for such conflict is that CSR leaves key public welfare issues to the discretion of private business. This voluntary issue assignment contrasts starkly with advanced welfare states’ traditions favoring negotiated agreements and strong regulation to control corporate conduct. This article analyzes the conflicts and compatibilities arising when advanced welfare states introduce CSR, focusing on how the two traditions diverge and on how conflicts are reconciled. Empirically the study focuses on four Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden—widely recognized as the most advanced welfare states, and increasingly as leaders in CSR public policy. From interviews of 55 officials of government ministries, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), labor unions, and employer associations, the authors conclude that tension indeed exists between CSR public policies and advanced welfare state traditions in all four countries. Whereas CSR’s aims are compatible with Nordic institutional traditions, the means promoted in CSR is in conflict with such Nordic traditions as corporatist agreements and rights-based welfare state regulation of social and environmental issues. There is harmony of goals, but conflict in means between the four Nordic countries studied.

Private Management and Public Opinion Corporate Social Responsiveness Revisited

This article presents a conceptual exploration of public opinion (PO) from the point of view of corporate social responsiveness (CSR2). The proposed PO-CSR2 framework encompasses four complementary means of framing public opinion: the philosophy of measurement of the market view (PO1); the action theory of the mobilization view (PO2); the negative, constraining mode of the social control view (PO3); and the proactive stance of the strategic enactment view (PO4). The article unfolds the particular characteristics of these four views and shows how they, individually and in conjunction, can serve as useful tools for understanding and analyzing corporate social responsiveness. Far from being a narrow concept that focuses attention mainly on the popular—and, some would say, superficial—aspects of responsiveness, the author argues that public opinion is a concept that embodies variety and provides a multifaceted point of departure for reflections on the relationship between business and society.

Opening Systems Theory: A Note on the Recent Special Issue of Organization

Organization recently devoted a special issue to Niklas Luhmanns systems theory. Since Luhmanns work remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world, the issue was an important opportunity to introduce Niklas Luhmanns contribution to organization theory to this audience. Unfortunately, the primarily theoretical approach to systems theory presented in the issue may leave the reader wondering what, if anything, Luhmanns work might contribute to empirical research into organizations. This note is an attempt to draw attention to the potential of Luhmanns approach in this regard.

Adopting sustainability in the organization: Managing processes of productive loose coupling towards internal legitimacy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between sustainability adoption and internal legitimacy construction.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is designed as a critical inquiry into existing research and practice on sustainability adoption, illustrated by two corporate vignettes.Findings – Prior studies tend to assume that awareness raising is a sufficient means to create employee commitment and support for corporate sustainability programs, while empirical observations indicate that managerial disregard of conflicting interpretations of sustainability may result in the illegitimacy of such programs.Originality/value – The authors suggest that a loosely coupled approach to sustainability adoption is a productive way to understand internal legitimacy construction, as it appreciates complexity and polyphony.

Trust and control in public sector reform: Complementarity and beyond

ABSTRACT This paper provides an analysis of trust-based management reform in the Danish public sector from the point of view of the trust–control nexus. Based on a qualitative case study of home care in the municipality of Copenhagen we argue that a complementary view of trust and control is superior to a substitution view when it comes to accounting for public sector reform as structure and process. Also, we propose a widening of the theoretical lens in the form of an emergent view of how trust and control, instead of being beforehand determinable and more or less stable identities, emerge in multiple and singular ways from multiple events in the organisation. Noticing a dearth of research that explicitly addresses trust issues with regard to public sector management and organisation, the paper is a response to the call for more studies of trust as an institutionally embedded phenomenon.

Developing Social Responsibility

The private sector is increasingly called upon to help solve or alleviate social and environmental problems, and many companies are heeding the call. Supposedly, there is today not a single company in the Fortune 500 that does not have some kind of policy regarding responsibility. Companies are engaging in a variety of activities that have hitherto been associated with the state/government or civil society, such as philanthropy and community investment, environmental management, workers’ rights and welfare, human rights, animal rights, corruption, corporate governance, and legal compliance. Companies are increasingly presenting themselves as good corporate citizens and making contributions to sustainable development in the broadest sense. Corporate managers are showing a willingness to let their actions and decisions be guided by the demands and expectations of a broad variety of stakeholders, rather than the narrow financial interests of owners/shareholders alone.

Introduction – After the Party. Crisis as Foundation

The existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard was familiar with the situation in which Allan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve and a fervent proponent of deregulation and neoliberal economics, found himself when facing the US Government Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives, and its chairman, the Democrat Henry Waxman on 23 October 2008. In 1843, Kierkegaard wrote a book about such a critical event, Fear and Trembling (1983), in which he observed that what we today as distinctively modern humans should be investigating is the crisis. This category is, briefl y put, the theme of this book. In the dire turbulence of a fi nancial crisis that has developed into a crisis of world views and, indeed, a moral crisis as well, we want to investigate the ‘moral foundations’ for managing the complexity of today’s business world. Before we provide an overview of the contributions, we want to delve into the notion of crisis itself and what today’s crisis may reveal about the dominant version of contemporary capitalism. We will also survey the ‘moral’ answers to economic dilemmas, which in the last half century have emerged under the aegis of corporate social responsibility. Lately, these eff orts has been given a distinctly philosophical turn, in the form of poststructuralist thoughts regarding our responsibility towards ‘the Other’. Such perspectives are surfacing now, and it is our conviction that they will become more pertinent as the precariousness of our current system becomes more and more visible, and, perhaps, more and more unbearable

CSR and Stakeholder Involvement: the Challenge of Organisational Integration

In the survey of CSR published by The Economist in January of 2005, Clive Crook argues that the CSR movement has, at least on the face of it, won the battle of ideas concerning modern business capitalism. In fact, there has not been much of a battle at all, since the opponents have never really turned up. Unopposed, Crook argues, the various fractions of the CSR movement have managed to distil a widespread suspicion of capitalism into a set of demands for action: ‘they have held companies to account, by embarrassing the ones that especially offend against the principles of CSR, and by mobilising public sentiment and an almost universally sympathetic press against them. Intellectually, at least, the corporate world has surrendered and gone over to the other side’ (Crook, 2005: 3).