Exercising Social Responsibility in Downsizing: Enrolling and Mobilizing Actors at a Swedish High-Tech Company

Abstract

This paper critically examines the claim made by previous research that companies exercise corporate social responsibility (CSR) by responding to stakeholder interests. It is based on a field study of the events following the announcement of collective redundancies at a Swedish high-tech company. Although more than 10,000 workers were dismissed, the company was accepted as being socially responsible. The study reveals that this outcome was the result of a process whereby corporate representatives managed to enrol and mobilize a network of actors into being faithful to, and defending, their definition of social responsibility. This indicates that a company can assume an active role in the construction of the same network of actors that it is asked to respond to and impose upon other actors its own definition of what it means to be socially responsible. As a result, the translation of CSR within the network of actors may reinforce the powerful position of the company, rather than curb it.