Corporate social responsibility as management idea: Between universal applicability and context dependency

Abstract

The international spread of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has ignited a debate whether CSR is universally applicable or context dependent. To shed new light on this question, I propose to treat CSR as a management idea that consists of nested levels of abstraction, namely relatively abstract ‘management rhetorics’, within which more prescriptive ‘management models’ reside, which contain concrete ‘management techniques’. I then analyse the global diffusion of one CSR management technique, a CSR guidance document by UK-based business association Business in the Community (BITC), which suggests that companies could address CSR as four material areas: Workplace, Environment, Marketplace and Community. Following its life-cycle through the innovation, diffusion, institutionalization, dormancy and rebirth stages allows me to identify forms of horizontal diffusion, that is, diffusion among peers within a particular sector or country, and vertical diffusion, that is, between organizations that stand in a hierarchical relationship to each other. At each stage of the life-cycle, the success of the management technique seems to be aided by factors that treat the management technique as universally applicable. In themselves, all of these claims to universal applicability are easily countered by a more critical reading of the argumentation; yet, it is the way in which the nested levels influence each other, that is, the management technique feeding into management models and management rhetorics, that tends to give the notion of universal applicability of CSR its persuasiveness.