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The Social Responsibility of Multinationals: From an Afterthought to Center Stage

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Rethinking Business Responsibility in a Global Context

Part of the book series: CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance ((CSEG))

Abstract

How has the social responsibility of multinationals (MNEs) changed over the past 50 years? This chapter provides a brief historical tour of MNEs and social issues from the late 1960s to the present. I argue that from the late 1960s forward, scholars in economics and international business (IB) focused on the economic impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) with some concern for political impacts; whereas international political economy (IPE) scholars paid more attention to political and social issues. It has only been in the past 15 years that the social responsibility of MNEs moved from an afterthought to a mainstream subject of inquiry for most MNE scholars. My arguments are documented through a review of key books and writings together with a personal history of my own research. I then review Schlegelmilch and Szőcs (2020) and argue that the book moves the social responsibility of MNEs literature forward in several ways.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I limit my brief history tour of “global social responsibility of business” to the “social responsibility of multinationals.” I do not discuss the cross-border/regional/global social responsibility of domestic businesses, which would be an interesting issue for another paper.

  2. 2.

    The piece has had very few citations so clearly others have not agreed with me!

  3. 3.

    Almost all of Raymond Vernon’s works from Vernon (1971) through Vernon (1998) also discuss international codes of conduct, albeit with a jaundiced view as Vernon regarded nonbinding codes without punishments attached as basically window dressing. My own view historically was the same as Vernon’s. Today, with Twitter and the iniquitousness of social media, “naming and shaming” MNEs that sign and do not comply with codes of conduct, even voluntary ones, are likely to have their reputations damaged by noncompliance. See, for example, the Cargill case documented in Yaffe-Bellany’s (2019).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Lorraine Eden

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  1. Lorraine Eden
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Correspondence to Lorraine Eden .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria

    Bodo B. Schlegelmilch

  2. University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Ilona Szőcs

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Eden, L. (2020). The Social Responsibility of Multinationals: From an Afterthought to Center Stage. In: Schlegelmilch, B.B., Szőcs, I. (eds) Rethinking Business Responsibility in a Global Context. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34261-6_1

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