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As in the well-known work of Freud, The Future of an Illusion, the essential secret of corporate social responsibility (CSR) resides in fostering present hope over a future desire, regardless of the past reality.
In the face of a reality marked by increasing social inequalities, deepening economic crises, soaring unemployment, unstable jobs, financial scandals, business fraud, political corruption and environmental disasters (Banerjee, 2008), debates have erupted regarding the productive-economic model and the role of business in society, with a demand that ecological concerns as well as the well-being and quality of life of the citizenry be coupled to the pursuit of profits. CSR constitutes one of the processes through which organizations, in terms of cause and solution, are approaching this demand by awareness raising concerning these change, and an endeavor to align business conduct with social needs and cultural values.
The debate on the social, occupational and environmental actions and repercussions of big business are being institutionalized, guided and managed through CSR in the reformist and transactional sense that avoids and distances itself from any revolutionary bent that calls for systemic and structural transformations or changes at the politico-economic level and that questions corporate social legitimacy (Scherer and Palazzo, 2011).
In this way, the implicit agreement between society and corporate organizations is subjected to pressure of multiple social, environmental and occupational tensions and changes that both the organizations as well as the individuals must confront in the establishment of CSR. As the external and internal contexts to which the organizations have to adapt become steadily more global, unstable, complex and self-contradictory, the paradoxical tensions spread and intensify, exerting a clear influence on all the organizational spheres in such a way that those most directly related to CSR can be summarized as follows.
First, the liberal social, cultural and ideological system is based on such values as competitiveness, flexibility, growth and development, and the latter in turn generates strong tension concerning social, environmental and occupational responsibility, thereby threatening the social contract between society and big business. The economic rationality and the search for necessary profit for the business adaptation and survival may not be compatible with social and environmental rationality necessary to develop authentic CSR (Müller-Christ, 2011). The paradoxical character of CSR emerges in the...