CSR in the aftermath of the financial crisis

The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature of CSR before and in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008. The aim of the research question is to map out the consequences upon CSR derived from the crisis and to derive new principles of future CSR models to come consistent with the consequences of the financial crisis, and to suggest new research as well as policy-making possibilities to highlight the importance and necessary survival of CSR as an instrument for sustainable and financial progress.

This paper uses a literature review of CSR prior to and after the financial crisis 2008, with an emphasis on academic papers published in peer-reviewed journals.

The findings of the paper reveal that post-crisis CSR-models do not articulate anything that has not been mentioned before; however, they do strengthen former values of CSR, but still lack an overall formula of how the financial sector can adopt CSR in the core of their businesses, and transparently display their products, and the risk adhering to them. The paper proposes a new Four-“E”-Principle that may guide new CSR-models to accomplish this deficit. See under “Originality”.

The paper calls for a discussion on ways in which governments and businesses can enhance social responsibility, though balancing the requirements of more engagement from businesses, as well as public sector companies in CSR. This paper suggests some instrumental mechanisms of how governments can engage, not only multinational companies, but also smaller companies, and other kinds of organizations acting on the market, to make them engage more in CSR.

The paper proposes a new Four-“E”-Principle to guide the development of new CSR-models based upon the core of Schwartz and Carroll's “Three-domain CSR-model”, which the Principle extends and revises to: Economy, L/Egal, Environment, and Ethics. This Principle disentangles the dialectic relationship between economic and social responsibility; takes financial products into consideration; refines the definitions of good stakeholder engagement without the illusions of corporate “Potemkinity”; and considers the benefit of replacing the semiotic meaning of the “C” in CSR from “corporate” to “capitalism's social responsibility” in order to extend the concept towards a broader range of market agents.