The transnational corporation, corporate social responsibility and the 'outsourcing' debate

Current popular debates in the United States and Australia on the topics of 'jobless recoveries' and the 'outsourcing' of skilled IT jobs to India (most conspicuously) evidence a confusion as to the institutional role of the business firm and its obligations to the broader stakeholder community, as well as to the more specific differences between outsourcing and the spatial restructuring of corporate value-chains. This paper will take up several issues in the hope of clarifying this confusion, including the essential nature of the business firm as an economic, political and social institution; the possibilities for social responsibility and stakeholder management in large internationalised firms; and the critical distinctions between domestic and international outsourcing and spatial restructuring. Data from the 'outsourcing' debate will be referenced to illustrate the differing logics/rationalities of relevant stakeholder groups.

Disrobing the emperor : mainstream CSR research and corporate hegemony

Purpose – This paper aims to utilise a typological matrix as the basis to categorise various corporate-society interventions. It aims to argue that an instrumental version of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is hegemonic in both the theoretical and normative domains of mainstream research, and that this hegemony underpins an intellectual blockage that prevents the field from achieving critical reflexivity and ultimately, a justifiable raison d'e^tre.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper reflects on the extant CSR literature in the context of globalisation; presents a two-dimensional typological matrix to be used in positioning corporate-society interventions; provides examples of particular activities relevant to each quadrant of the matrix; and considers the wider political economy of CSR research.

Findings – The logical implications of the corporation as an institution behaving in increasing accordance with the normative expectations of mainstream CSR scholarship will likely lead in the direction of increasing corporate hegemony.

Practical implications – The paper proposes the adoption of the more theoretically coherent and empirically precise terms enlightened self-interest and corporate social irresponsibility in CSR and related research streams, as well as the institutional relocation of much future CSR research to disciplinary areas outside of the business school.

Originality/value – The typological matrix presented in this paper offers a new way of locating corporate-society interventions. The partial abandonment of the term “CSR” by researchers, as well as the institutional relocations of much CSR research, are original notions.