Corporate social responsibility: Towards a new market-embedded morality?

Theoretical Inquiries in Law

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 2008, Pages

  Shamir, Ronen ^a  

^a TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 46749087077     PISSN: None     EISSN: 15653404     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2202/1565-3404.1190     Document Type: Review

References (91)

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45. Id.
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52. Carbon, Clean-Tech and Sustainable Markets Set to Attract Trillions, ENVT NEWS SERVICE, Nov. 29, 2005, http://www.ens-newswi.re.com/ens/nov2005/2005-11-29-01.asp. The revised EP expanded so as to cover all project-finance loans above U.S. $10 million, a notable change from, the previously establish $50 million, benchmark.
53. OECD members that are not designated as high-income countries are also classified as non-OECD countries in the classification system of the EP.
54. See International Finance Corporation's Performance Standards on Social & Environmental Sustainability 28-30 (Apr. 30, 2006), available at http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/enviro.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/ pol_PerformanceStandards2006_full/$FILE/IFC+Performance+Standards.pdf (Performance Standard 7: Indigenous Peoples).
55. The "Equator Principles," supra note 39.
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57. Wright and Rwabizambuga looked, at the distribution of the then 32 signatories. There were 51 signatories in May 2007. See The Equator Principles, http://www.equator-principles.com (last visited Aug. 1, 2007). Their breakup by location is: 26 Western Europe, 14 U.S./Canada, 5 Brazil, 2 Australia, 1 South Africa, 3 Japan. Notably absent are Chinese banks that are particularly active in Africa. This distribution conforms with and further augments the findings of Wright and Rwabizambuga.
58. For more data on participating banks see the site of Dealogic ProjectWare, a London-based financial data provider, at http://www.ens-newswire. com/ens/nov2005/2005-.11-29-01.asp (last visited Nov. 1, 2007).
59. BAUMAN, supra note 7.
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61. Id. at 12.
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63. E.g., GEORGE RITZER, THE MCDONALDIZATION OF SOCIETY (1996);
64. SASSEN, supra note 2;
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66. GIDDENS, supra note 32;
67. Pierre Bourdieu, The Abdication of the State, in THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD: SOCIAL SUFFERING IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY 181 (Pierre Bourdieu ed., 1999);
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69. Lemke, supra note 17;
70. HARVEY, supra note 15;
71. Jayasuriya, supra note 46.
72. Cf. MORRELL HEALD, THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF BUSINESS: COMPANY AND COMMUNITY, 1900-1960 ( 1970) ;
73. LIPSCHUTZ WITH ROWE, supra note 13 ;
74. De Winter, supra note 34. A crucial distinction is in order here. The question of the relationship between economy and morality may be traced back to Adam Smith and has been a focus of contemplation ever since.
75. See James E. Alvey, A Short History of Economics as a Moral Science, 2 J. MARKETS & MORALITY 41 (1999).
76. There is a sub-field of journals that also focus on related issues (e.g., Journal of Markets and Morality) and, in general, the last two decades have seen what may be described as an explosion in writing about commerce and ethical questions, see Carroll, supra note 37;
77. BUSINESS AND SOCIETY: A READER IN THE HISTORY, SOCIOLOGY AND ETHICS OF BUSINESS (Barry Castro ed., 1996). Within this general framework, moral questions have often been discussed in terms of virtues such as honesty, punctuality, reliability, as well, as charity and philanthropy and other inter-human virtues. At least for analytical purposes, it is useful to distinguish the inquiry into the effect of commercial transactions on moral motivations and perceptions from that which concerns us here, namely moral, responsibility in the sense of organized political action by institutionalized market actors (e.g., corporations, trade associations, global, financial institutions).
78. Clearly, this is a problematic distinction as there are many crossover approaches (from classic works such as those of POLANYI, supra note 6,
79. WEBER, supra note 4,
80. HIRSCH, supra note 48,
81. and AMARTYA SEN, ON ETHICS AND ECONOMICS (1987),
82. to Luís Carvalho & João Rodrigues, On Markets and Morality: Revisiting Fred Hirsch, 64 REV. SOC. ECON. 331 (2006)
83. and Roberts, supra note 38). However, the distinction, is useful, in limiting the scope and aspirations of the present study, which focuses on the discursive and practical attribution of moral agency to corporations in the context of theorizing the deployment of social configurations such as governance.
84. CHRISTINE PARKER, THE OPEN CORPORATION: EFFECTIVE SELF-REGULATION AND DEMOCRACY (2002).
85. Marc Orlitzky et al., Corporate Social and Financial Performance: A Meta-Analysis, 24 ORG. STUD. 403 (2003);
86. JOSHUA DANIEL MARGOLIS ETAL., PEOPLE AND PROFITS? THE SEARCH FOR A LINK BETWEEN A COMPANY'S SOCIAL AND FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE (2001).
87. However it should be noted that the question whether "socially responsible" corporations fare better on market indices is a contested issue, breeding new lines of research in business schools.
88. Lobel, supra note 22;
89. Parker, supra note 23.
90. Comments of UNICE to the Communication from, the European Commission Concerning Corporate Social. Responsibility, 2002/109.07/UNICEcomments_final en (Nov. 28, 2002).
91. The terms and expressions cited above are based on the position papers that multinational, corporations submitted as their contribution to a consultation process on corporate social responsibility held by the European Union in 2002. Specifically, the above terms were used by Cadbury, Siemens, Kellogg, General Motors and British Petroleum.