Reframing Corporate Social Responsibility: Lessons from the Financial Crisis

Citation

Stokes, P. (2012), "Reframing Corporate Social Responsibility: Lessons from the Financial Crisis", Society and Business Review, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 104-105. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465681211195832

This work seems to be a book of the moment and indeed it is, however, to view it this way would be to miss the essential thrust of the text. While, the authors are eager to show some of the structural and conceptual fissures and fractures that played a role in bringing about the financial crisis, they are even more earnest regarding the perennial and on‐going issues that permeate society. As such it becomes quickly apparent that the recent financial crisis, rather than being Armageddon, was more a symptom of a longer‐term general malaise.

The book follows a logical structure commencing with a call for “reframing” corporate social responsibility (CSR), a position with which few readers will have an argument. As with many management fads and movements, the book rightly notes the colonizing effects of managerialistic behaviour and conduct which have had a tendency all too often to make CSR adoption and practice by organizations an expedient, tokenistic and empty gesture. The next section, comprising five separate contributions builds a picture of CSR and links it to the financial crisis. This is complemented by the subsequent third section which identifies a response in regulatory models and managerial frameworks. The final fourth section looks to the future and seeks to map out a post‐crisis agenda. Parts II and III dedicate approximately 100 pages to their analysis. The final IV section contributes some 40 pages and attempts to work as a window beyond the extant text and also a conclusion of sorts.

The edited chapters bring a fascinating and broad church of insights to the building of an understanding of the crisis. These lenses embrace, among many others, neo‐liberalism, capitalism, ideology, consumption, the dark side of social capital and national politics. These conceptual foci are intertwined with contributions from a number of national and cultural perspectives and these serve to show how CSR played out, for example, in American, British, Dutch and Polish contexts.

A recurrent theme of the commentaries is an attempt to juxtapose and reconcile responsible with irresponsible behaviour and their conditions and consequences. This is driven forward through a potent analysis of the impact of the theory/practice nexus of the concepts introduced. In relation to this, while working through the sections, I also had a gradual growing feeling about one particular issue and I was compelled to see that on arrival at p. 231 Visser's contribution rightly confirmed what was dawning on me too – the role of “greed”. He rightly invokes the eponymous and infamous fictional character Gordon Gekko's avaricious speech in the film Wallstreet. Other contributions, to name one, Fisher's, work this theme in alternative ways and it is through this general pattern of analysis that the book evolves its own intellectual wealth and value. Things that could be approached slightly differently in future editions might be the addition of a general conclusion as the work tends to end on the Polish context and there is a lingering sense that it would have been valuable to pull everything together one final time.

Overall, this is a timely, cogent and well‐conceived book. It is well‐written with genuine engagement, passion and concern. This is not a blasé wander through the issues – it is a heartfelt “call to arms” for justice and action. As such it has an undercurrent of seeking what might be a moral solution to the predicament in which many western and developed economies and the organizations and the people operating within them currently find themselves.