Corporate Social Responsibility – vom Reputationsmanagement zum politischen Projekt

Abstract

Luise Görges, Ulf Kadritzke: Corporate Social Responsibility – from Reputation Management
to the Strategic Advance of Corporate Power. This history of CSR exemplifies the
advancement of corporate power in the process of capitalist globalization. Initially started in
response to reports on the violation of human rights, the transnational corporations (TNCs)
managed to design the CSR concept as a voluntary and highly selective commitment to bridge
the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of corporate conduct. With the worldwide rise of
the neoliberal paradigm in economic and social policy, these CSR-concepts were combined
into a capital-dominated CSR-complex. The article tries to reconstruct the scientific, political
and ideological roots of the concept and the steps transforming the corporate CSR-movement
into a successful ‘industry’. But the company-driven CSR is consistently confronted with
actors and actions of a new social movement (including NGOs as well as unions). These
organizations of civil society steadily uncover the social consequences of corporate global
strategies. The so far asymmetric balance of power may nevertheless give NGOs and their
allies– backed by the new media – a chance to lay open corporate misconduct and demonstrate
the main ‘performance’ of global corporate power: the deepening of class polarization and
ecological instability.