The Corporate Social Responsibility Meme as a Business Foundation for Economic Peacemaking

Abstract

This chapter presents economic peacemaking in historical business terms through an exploration of the meaning of competition in the 20th century. The 19th century meme, “survival of the fittest,” may be considered a quality of natural law that has been used to defend laissez faire capitalism, which has at times produced economic outcomes that are good for a select few at the expense of humanity at large. The counter-concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR), which was developed in the mid-20th century, presented an alternative view of the corporation as citizen, and called for the compromise of profits for the sake of the betterment of the community in which the business existed. This chapter explores the historical development of these concepts in the social science context of social Darwinism vs. neo-Darwinism, concluding that economic peacemaking through stakeholder management and CSR implementation is an inherently natural concept and preferable for humanity to unregulated competition.