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“My Country’s Future”: A Culture-Centered Interrogation of Corporate Social Responsibility in India

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Abstract

Companies operating and located in emerging economy nations routinely couch their corporate social responsibility (CSR) work in nation-building terms. In this article, I focus on the Indian context and critically examine mainstream CSR discourse from the perspective of the culture-centered approach (CCA). Accordingly, five main themes of CSR stand out: nation-building facade, underlying neoliberal logics, CSR as voluntary, CSR as synergetic, and a clear urban bias. Next, I outline a CCA-inspired CSR framework that allows corporate responsibility to be re-claimed and re-framed by subaltern communities of interest. I identify such resistive openings via interrogations of culture (I focus on oft-cited Gandhian ethics here), structure (State policy, organizational strategy, and global/local flows), and agency (subaltern reframing of institutional responsibility, engagement with alternative modes of agency, and deconstructive vigilance).

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Notes

  1. The examples I draw from span private domestic companies (e.g., Reliance Telecom), private MNCs from outside India (e.g., Coca Cola), private MNCs originating from India (e.g., Tata Motors), and publicly owned domestic companies (e.g., National Thermal Power Corporation). Thus, my conception of “CSR in India” includes CSR work done by both homegrown firms and those originating elsewhere.

  2. The modernization paradigm of development, much in vogueduring the 1970s–1990s and arguably still favored by international aid agencies, has been critiqued for a number of reasons. It measures social development mainly via national economic growth indicators (like GDP); does not consider contextual specificities; assumes that the “developed” status of the West is the final good for all nations/communities; prioritizes neoliberal capitalism and privileges national elites, assuming that wealth will “trickle down” to the rest; tends to adopt top-down communication methods over participative dialogue; and arguably orientalizes non-Western cultures. For an overview, see Dutta (2011) and Melkote and Steeves (2001).

  3. Visser’s (2008) CSR pyramid for developing nations simply moves “philanthropic responsibilities” at a more fundamental level, second only to the “economic,” but little else is changed from the standard pyramid. Moreover, the “new” pyramid tends to treat cultural differences as homogenous, clubbing all developing countries together, and aims toward a normative “ideal”—perhaps stemming from a reified conception of culture, as noted by Dirlik (1997).

  4. While I have focused on Gandhian ethics in my discussion of culture here, CCA might be fruitfully applied to other cultural frames as well (e.g., re-interpreting Islamic scripture to draw out deeper meanings of khairaat), so that several resistive openings arise to critique dominant CSR meanings.

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  1. Brian Lamb School of Communication, Purdue University, Beering Hall of Liberal Arts and Education, Room 2114, 100 North University Street, West Lafayette, IN, 47907-2098, USA

    Rahul Mitra

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Transcript of Chevron Advertisement, “We Agree … Community”

Student::

Oil companies have changed my country.

Chevron Employee::

Oil companies can make a difference.

Background::

Oil companies should support their communities.

Student::

We have a chance to rebuild the economy…

Chevron Employee::

Create jobs, keep people healthy, and improve schools.

Student::

… and our communities.

Chevron Employee::

In Angola, Chevron helped train engineers, teachers and farmers; launched health programs. It’s not just good business…

Student::

I’m hopeful about my country’s future.

Chevron Employee::

It’s my country’s future…

Background:

We agree.

(Source: http://www.chevron.com/media/weagree/community/weagreecommunitytv.pdf. The advertorial clip can be viewed at http://www.chevron.com/about/advertising/?gclid=CPyhtMXSo6YCFUmo4AodTV2kog).

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Mitra, R. “My Country’s Future”: A Culture-Centered Interrogation of Corporate Social Responsibility in India. J Bus Ethics 106, 131–147 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-0985-8

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