Abstract
Scholars studying the global diffusion of “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) practices and the associated rise of privatized forms of economic governance have tended to shift attention away from the role of corporations in motivating these processes to the one played by nonbusiness forces seeking social control of corporations. We bring corporate power back in by turning the spotlight to the agency of business classes, the business entities capable of pursuing transcorporate, societal-level, macro-political endeavors. Building on a comparative investigation of two of the world’s earliest mass CSR adoptions, in postwar Venezuela and Britain, we argue that business classes responding to anti-capitalist challenges were the original diffusers of CSR practices and, interrelatedly, promoters of CSR-based, privatized forms of regulation and governance. Organized by peak business associations, the purpose of these “business-class CSR mobilizations” was to weaken the state in its relation to corporations and increase the control of business over social trends. We discuss the contribution of our historical perspective and analytical approach to a more complete and balanced picture of the global rise of CSR in late capitalism.
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Notes
See Walker and Rea’s (2014, pp. 284–285) call to reconsider the traditional focus on demonstrating transcorporate unity of political action, because the effective promotion of business interests does not necessarily depend on unity, and because the preoccupation with unity comes at the expense of more exploration of “how business mobilizes and what it gets when it does.”
For example, Akard’s (1992) analyses suggest that business-class mobilizations center on business associations, which coordinate the actions of a sub-class group of corporations. In the mobilization against a Consumer Protection Agency (1970s), for instance, the leading American PBAs established an ad hoc lobbying organization to coordinate the anti-CPA campaign that, at its peak, had over 400 corporate and trade association members—that is, a sub-class quantitative scope (ibid., pp. 603–605). Nonetheless, this effort was massive and brought victory to business on that macro-political front.
In the present case of Venezuela (see below)—and classically in the United States (Mills 2000/1956; Domhoff 1978; Collins 1981; Kaplan 2015)—two segments produced divergent articulations of classwide rationality: the segment of “business conservatives” staunchly defended laissez-faire capitalism and that of the “business liberals” called for a departure from laissez-faire, including a more accommodative approach to state intervention and a turn to CSR.
For a more comprehensive and nuanced analysis of the classwide rationality (as well as other rationales) underlying corporate philanthropy in the United States, see Himmelstein 1997.
According to Kinderman (2015) study of “national CSR associations”—CSR-oriented corporate coalitions that typically hold from dozens to hundreds corporate members—the five earliest of which were set up in Venezuela (1964), the Philippines (1971), South Africa (1976), and Britain and Paraguay (1981). Starting with this list, our research confirmed that in Venezuela and Britain during this period hundreds of corporations adopted CSR practices. In the more complex case of Britain, our research revealed that the CSR surge of the 1980s was in fact the second; a 1973–1976 wave of adoptions predated it. In this article, we focus on Britain’s first wave of CSR adoption.
Ortiz, currently employed by Incus Capital Advisors, is former president of the Caracas Stock Exchange and a board member of some of Venezuela’s largest companies.
Americans constituted close to 30% of the speakers in Maracay. The focal CSR turn owed much to the American petroleum multinationals operating in Venezuela, which encouraged the local corporate community to adopt CSR and provided informational and financial support)see Kaplan and Kinderman 2017).
The sample was to some extent biased toward adopters, as acknowledged by the surveyors.
In other areas of self-reform discussed in the report, where no immediate legislative intentions were in play—e.g., “The company and its consumers” or “The company and society at large”—the report encouraged and guided corporations on how to adopt beyond-the-law CSR practices. The implicit intention was that such adoptions could improve the position of business in future policy struggles, ideally even preempt them.
Attention to market citizenship and similar concepts was awakened in the context of new approaches to development taken by neoliberal governments (Rose and Miller 1992; Korteweg 2003; Jayasuriya 2005). Our findings indicate that, in some places, private sector initiatives had already applied such approaches of development in the postwar period.
For a discussion of the classwide rationality underlying the pursuit of corporate control of nonprofit organizations, see Useem (1984, pp. 80–85). See Bartley (2007b) for the role of corporate and other foundations in de-radicalizing the activity of NGOs—in particular, through the channeling of their activity toward voluntary forms of governance. See Kaplan and Kinderman (2017) for business’s promotion of CSR-based, market citizenship-oriented public policy in Britain of the early 1980s.
The WEF was worried that unless globalization became more inclusive, “we have to face the prospect of a resurgence of the acute social confrontations of the past, magnified at the international level” (Rupert 2000, p. 146).
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Acknowledgments
We are indebted to Tim Bartley, Gregory Jackson, Phil Jones and David L. Levy for their very helpful comments and suggestions. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their feedback, and to Karen Lucas and Janet Gouldner for their guidance in the review process. The paper also benefitted from feedback from the audiences at the Business School and Center of Area Studies at the Free University of Berlin as well as conference participants at the 2015 meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, the 2015 European Sociological Association meeting, and the 2017 meeting of the American Sociological Association. Finally, we would like to thank our interviewees for their time and valuable insights.
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This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 393/14), the Dahlem Research School at Freie Universität Berlin, and the Minerva Stiftung of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.
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Kaplan, R., Kinderman, D. The business-class case for corporate social responsibility: mobilization, diffusion, and institutionally transformative strategy in Venezuela and Britain. Theor Soc 48, 131–166 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-019-09340-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-019-09340-w