Abstract
The author is professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Bologna. In this chapter, he deals with two specific questions: How robust is the critique against corporate social responsibility (CSR)? Which ethical anchoring is capable of offering more solid support for CSR? Notwithstanding the plethora of studies and debates that have taken place over the course of the last quarter century, there still exists no commonly accepted definition of CSR. The author analyzes four different kinds of critique of CSR and then subsequently four different possible ethical foundations. He argues for a conception of virtue ethics.
“The Ethical Anchoring of Corporate Social Responsibility” is republished from L. Zsolnai (ed.), Interdisciplinary Yearbook of Business Ethics, vol. 1: 31–51. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006. A somewhat different version of this essay was published in Italian (Zamagni 2005).
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Notes
- 1.
The synthesis of Friedman’s thinking on the theme discussed here can be found in Friedman (1993).
- 2.
The “paradox of the stakeholder” of Goodpaster goes like this: on the one hand, the manager is paid by the shareholders so that he looks out for their best interests (that is to maximize profit); on the other hand, the manager must act so as to balance the interests of all (Goodpaster 1998).
- 3.
- 4.
One observes that an incentive, like a constraint, is always the expression of a relationship of power. That which changes is only the form with which the power is expressed.
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Zamagni, S. (2012). The Ethical Anchoring of Corporate Social Responsibility and the Critique of CSR. In: Schlag, M., Mercado, J. (eds) Free Markets and the Culture of Common Good. Ethical Economy, vol 41. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2990-2_14
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