Corporate Social Responsibility: A Promising Social Innovation or a Neoliberal Strategy in Disguise?
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Date
2014
Authors
Savevska, Maja
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Romanian Journal of European Affairs
Abstract
Since the Lisbon Summit the European Union has become resolute in its
intention to promote the uptake of corporate social responsibility among European
companies. The recent financial crisis has provided further impetus for evangelising CSR,
which is identified by the EU public authorities as one exit strategy from the crisis and
a promising means of fulfilling the Treaty objectives of inclusive and sustainable social
market economy. This paper finds the above assertion problematic and uses a Polanyian
framework to evaluate its validity. The paper represents a conceptual intervention in
the policy justification provided by the European Commission. Contrary to the overly
optimistic voices that see decommodifying tendencies within CSR, this paper claims that
CSR does not have a potential to re-embed the economy as argued by the Commission.
Despite its protective invocation, CSR is predicated on deepened commodification. It
depends on the staging of a special type of exchange relation, whereby reputation is
quantified and sold as a commodity by being denominated in a common unit. As such
the CSR form promoted by the Commission is a microeconomic counterpart to the regime of rule-based macroeconomic depoliticisation.
Description
Keywords
corporate social responsibility, European Union, Polanyi, disembedded, commodification
Citation
Savevska, M. (2014). Corporate Social Responsibility:: A Promising Social Innovation or a Neoliberal Strategy in Disguise? Romanian Journal of European Affairs, 14(2), 63-80.