Hallazgos de Auditoría

The remainder of this section presents four Gramscian-influenced critiques of CSR that have emerged from CSR literature. Many of these critiques will be taken up again further on in the thesis and their relationship to global distributive justice made clearer. However, the overarching criticism presented here is that the manner in which CSR is discussed, debated and developed has become something of an orthodoxy that inherently limits the idea of what it means for a corporation to be just or ethical. As Blowfield discusses, the orthodoxy of CSR is comprised of voluntary standards, the measurement of performance in relation to those standards, the concept of the stakeholder, and multi-sectoral partnerships as a form of governance of business. (Blowfield, 2005b: 174). Although there is criticism and debate about these elements of CSR, this generally involves a debate and analysis over the ―how to‖ of CSR, rather than a substantial debate about the structural conditions that promote and enable CSR (Ibid). Thus the idea of the just corporation is often presented as a technical question of how to do

CSR better, or more efficiently and less often is a question of ethical or normative consideration.

The process, form and content of CSR are symbolic of hegemonic control of global capital and there is little room in conventional CSR agendas for questioning the social forces underpinning that control. Below are four ways in which this control manifests itself. In relation to justice, this is problematic because it cannot be assumed that the limits of justice are coterminous with the limits of market rationality (nor can it be assumed that they are coterminous with the state). As Levy and Kaplan state, ―Typically, business agrees to concessions that modify corporate practices at the margin, but which do not challenge the fundamentals of managerial authority or market rationality‖ (2007: 20). Gramscian ideas open up a field of critique that interrogates this assumption.

First, to a great extent practitioners and supporters of CSR control the scope of its agenda. By defining the questions and issues that CSR deals with, and the manner in which it deals with them, CSR can be seen as a mechanism of global capitalism that legitimises the values of individualism, consumerism and accumulation. What this means is that the CSR agenda is never about any root- and-branch transformation of the system of global capitalism. For instance, there is little mention within the literature on CSR on fairer methods of taxation and redistribution of profits; additionally, as Jenkins notes, transfer pricing, tax avoidance, the abuse of market power and the poverty impacts of business activities are not matters for discussion in the CSR agenda (Jenkins/UNRISD, 2001: 528). Wider questions surrounding the reduction of state power with

respect to corporations are similarly not addressed, nor are the ethical implications of profit-accumulation as a result of CSR policies. Control of the scope of the CSR agenda inherently limits the extent to which we can call CSR, or a specific corporation that practices CSR, just or ethical.

The second critique is to do with consensus. As Blowfield has discussed, this hegemonic hold that capitalist interests have on the CSR agenda relies on the existence of consensus within the debate. The idea is that by purportedly giving all stakeholders a say in the discussion, the ―right‖ answer will emerge. As Blowfield puts it:

[consensus] allows CSR to present opposing ideas as coherent and unproblematic. It also allows companies to claim to engage in complex issues such as sustainability, environmental management, social justice, animal rights, governance and cultural diversity without any real discussion or recognition of the possibility that aspects of such issues might be ideationally or axiologically contradictory (2005b: 177).

In this sense, in striving to establish a consensus on ―best practice‖, CSR debates are restricted to an uncritical approach, which takes as given the structural conditions that have brought it about. While the neo-Polanyian idea about consensus discussed above values consensus as a kind of back-up mechanism for the structures of global capitalism, the idea here is that consensus in the debate about CSR masks the inherent limitations and contestability of the subject matter. Blowfield makes a similar point about the idea of the stakeholder, and related concepts of partnership, dialogue and engagement, as well as the tools that are used to implement the CSR agenda (for e.g. auditing, reporting, verification and labelling), in that such analysis tells us nothing about the underlying power dynamics involved in these relationships (Ibid: 180). Similarly,

Newell remarks that in its efforts to mask conflict, CSR ―underestimates the importance of power and resistance in enabling or preventing outcomes favourable to the poor‖ (2005: 556). By establishing an ―inclusive‖ partnership, the agenda can easily be dictated by the most powerful stakeholders, and doesn‘t address which groups are in fact excluded, and how they came to be excluded – and in many instances it would seem that such exclusion is inherently part of what it is to be a just corporation.

As such, by making consensus and the absence of conflict a central facet of the CSR agenda, and by providing intellectual and moral leadership, the structural conditions that confer power on to those who control that agenda are reinforced. In this way, the CSR process is unavoidably politicised. As Levy and Kaplan state:

[…] the Gramscian concept of hegemony suggests that constructing this consensus is a political project of building alliances, strategic negotiation, and public debates. The stability of a governance system relies on a combination of coercive power, economic incentives, and normative and cognitive frames that coordinate perceptions of interest. The particular practices of CSR that emerge around an issue therefore reflect the balance of forces among competing interest groups (2007: 19-20).

Thus rather than being about finding ethical or just solutions to the problems of corporate activity, the CSR process is shaped by the social forces underpinning it, and outcomes reflect the power relations of such forces. This criticism will be taken up again specifically in chapter six, when the importance of open and fair deliberation and consultation in relation to CSR and global distributive justice is highlighted.

Following on from this, the third critique is to do with these structural conditions, and the way in which they are perceived to be inordinately detrimental to the position of women, a critique that has been put forward by critical/Marxist feminists. A gendered dimension to this explanation of CSR would argue that in replicating the structural conditions of global capitalism, CSR policies do nothing to improve the position of women. Taking the view that CSR represents the values and power of global capitalism and neoliberal ideology in which the market is privileged and institutionalised, CSR is a means by which market dominated governance structures establish internal regulatory mechanisms (e.g. codes of conduct), thereby limiting the external scrutiny of the production regimes of transnational capital and its impact on labour and the environment (Rai, 2004: 582). On this basis, processes of globalisation and the operations of global corporations in the context of such processes have an inordinately detrimental effect upon the wellbeing and position of women.

This type of gendered analysis of CSR would challenge the nature of market- based solutions to social and political problems. Such solutions are inherently problematic because they reproduce structures of gender inequality. A good example of this is the case of homeworkers, a disproportionate share of whom are women. Many codes of conduct take jobs away from homeworkers because companies are unable to oversee such work, regardless of the fact that homeworkers‘ incomes make a crucial contribution to family survival. In replicating the structures of global capitalism, CSR reinforces the fact that capitalism does not place an economic value on the traditional role of women in the home and accords a favourable position to corporations at the expense of the

state and redistribution policies thus undermining the position of women (Meyer and Pruegl, 1999: 15)

More broadly, the fourth critique is that by sticking to this uncritical approach, advocates of CSR retain a stranglehold on what exactly constitutes socially responsible behaviour on the part of corporations, thus also retaining control over the very meaning of (corporate) ethics itself, and how the role of the private sector in contemporary global political society is understood (Blowfield, 2005b: 174-177). This view problematises the conception of CSR being a self-reflexive regime in the Polanyian sense. According to Best, regimes have to be self- reflexive in order to work (Best, 2003: 368). If the ideas of ―stakeholder dialogue‖ and ―partnership‖ can be reduced to labels that merely provide cover for the deeper levels of control that the CSR agenda has over conceptions of global ethics or justice, then it would seem on this view that CSR offers limited possibilities in terms of seeking to rectify the social and environmental problems of global capitalism.

Thus, in establishing this need for consensus, partnership and dialogue, this fourth critique posits that there is a deeper process of the commodification of ethics inherent in CSR as a result of its form and content. By making CSR policies part of brand value, the notion of what it means to be ethical is made part of the commercial value of a product; hence the vast resources devoted to the publication of glossy brochures and advanced websites for the CSR division of many global corporations. Thus ethics is something that can be bought and sold like any other product. However, presumably the choice about whether to

participate in this form of ethics and the socio-economic resources required to make this choice, are constrained along the lines of gender, race, class and ethnicity (Barnett et al, 2005: 41). Thus it becomes more possible for certain sectors of society to make ethical choices, and participation in ethics is inherently limited. Furthermore, the possibility that CSR is not ethical, or the possibility that a socially responsible corporation could behave differently – or even the possibility that what constitutes ethical behaviour on the part of a corporation is something for discussion – is not allowed for. This process positions the individual as ethical consumer, the corporation as ethical actor and establishes a clear relationship between both that is objectively ―good‖. In so doing, the values of capitalism are consolidated.

In summary, this section has utilised Gramscian ideas related to the hegemonic control of global capital to develop a critique of the form, content and process of CSR. The central idea is that the control exerted on CSR renders it an orthodoxy by which the idea of the just or ethical corporation is inherently limited. The section detailed four ways in which this happens. From a Gramscian point of view, this commodification of ethics is problematic because it is representative of the exertion of hegemonic control of capital. However, if the overall process of CSR is indeed limited by market rationality, as the critique above has argued, then this is presumably also a difficulty for the Polanyian explanation detailed above. Part of the Polanyian critique is that unfettered capitalism leads to the prioritisation of the values of exchange, rather than those of redistribution and reciprocity. Thus, if the agenda, tools and process of CSR is limited by the extent to which it adds (commercial) value, then it is likely that it will lead to further

disembedding of economic activity from society, on the Polanyian understanding at least. As such, what these Gramscian ideas illuminate is that the way in which CSR is practiced renders it inadequate as a reaction to a Polanyian-type resistance of global capitalism.

3.6 Conclusion

This chapter has presented an explanation for CSR using insights from both Polanyian and Gramscian perspectives. In the first instance, Polanyian ideas were argued to be useful to understanding why the phenomenon of CSR has emerged, or why the question of what it means for a corporation to be socially responsible emerged when it did. What a Polanyian perspective tells us in this regard is that the emergence of CSR is a reaction to the inevitable resistance to unfettered capitalism; such resistance comes about as result of the disembedding of economic activity from wider society that is alleged to part of the process of global capitalism. As such, it was argued that resistance, in the form of civil society activism as well as various financial crises of the late 1990s, was met with the elevation of the question of what it means for a corporation to behave responsibly; CSR is the reaction to this increasingly prominent question.

Moving on to the Gramscian element of the explanation, the chapter argued that Gramsci‘s ideas about the hegemonic control of global capitalism open up a useful area of critique in relation to the form and content that the CSR process has taken. In this regard, it was argued that the agenda and scope of CSR, as well as the process and tools used to implement it, are a manifestation of the

hegemonic control that global capitalism has on the CSR process. As such, it was argued that in terms of the issues that are part of the CSR agenda, those who are deemed eligible to participate in it, as well as the way in which CSR is practiced, outcomes are determined by the underlying power dynamics that are a part of global capitalism.

In terms of how this explanation is important for subsequent chapters that discuss the question of global distributive justice in relation to global corporations, these Polanyian and Gramscian insights open up a critique that diverges from a discourse that is dominated by the technical question of how to do CSR better or more efficiently. These insights are most particularly important in terms of the ideas about justice that are discussed in chapter six under the heading of ―concessive theory‖. In this, the thesis moves from an ideal view of justice and corporations, to a view that concedes to certain facts; in this instance, such facts are those of the existence of global capitalism and global corporations. By developing an understanding of CSR as intrinsically related to, and in many ways shaped by, global capitalism – both in the Polanyian sense of why CSR exists, as well as in the Gramscian sense of why it takes the form it does – the ideas articulated as concessive theory aim to strike a balance between the reality of CSR as it is now, as well as the normative demands that ought to be made on global corporations. So although the Gramscian account construes CSR an instance of global capitalism in which systemic harm is a feature, the core aim of the thesis to develop a proposal that is to some degree a feasible one, necessitates that such a proposal is set within that system. As such, within the concessive

theory proposed, the constraints of the process of CSR are acknowledged and an attempt is made to reform it from within.