Corporate Social Responsibility Theories: Mapping the Territory

Corporate Social ResponsibilityTheories: Mapping the TerritoryElisabet Garriga,

Dome`nec MeleABSTRACT. The Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) field presents not only a landscape of theories butalso a proliferation of approaches, which are controversial,complex and unclear. This article tries to clarify the situation, mapping the territory by classifying the mainCSR theories and related approaches in four groups: (1)instrumental theories, in which the corporation is seen asonly an instrument for wealth creation, and its socialactivities are only a means to achieve economic results; (2)political theories, which concern themselves with thepower of corporations in society and a responsible use ofthis power in the political arena; (3) integrative theories,in which the corporation is focused on the satisfaction ofsocial demands; and (4) ethical theories, based on ethicalresponsibilities of corporations to society. In practice,each CSR theory presents four dimensions related to

profits, political performance, social demands and ethicalvalues. The findings suggest the necessity to develop anew theory on the business and society relationship,which should integrate these four dimensions.KEY WORDS: corporate social responsibility, corporateresponsiveness, corporate citizenship, stakeholder management, corporate social performance, issues management,sustainable development, the common goodIntroductionSince the second half of the 20th century a longdebate on corporate social responsibility (CSR) hasbeen taking place. In 1953, Bowen (1953) wrote theseminal book Social Responsibilities of the Businessman.Since then there has been a shift in terminology fromthe social responsibility of business to CSR. Additionally, this field has grown significantly and todaycontains a great proliferation of theories, approachesand terminologies. Society and business, social issuesmanagement, public policy and business, stakeholdermanagement, corporate accountability are just someof the terms used to describe the phenomena relatedto corporate responsibility in society. Recently, renewed interest for corporate social responsibilitiesand new alternative concepts have been proposed,including corporate citizenship and corporate sustainability. Some scholars have compared these newconcepts with the classic notion of CSR (see vanMarrewijk, 2003 for corporate sustainability; andMatten et al., 2003 and Wood and Lodgson, 2002for corporate citizenship).Furthermore, some theories combine differentapproaches and use the same terminology with different meanings. This problem is an old one. It was30 years ago that Votaw wrote: corporate socialresponsibility means something, but not always theElisabet Garriga is a PhD student in Management at IESEBusiness School, University of Navarra, Spain. She holds adegree in Philosophy and another in Economics from theUniversity of Barcelona, Spain. She has taught BusinessEthics at...