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Boundaries Between Business and Politics: A Study on the Division of Moral Labor

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Abstract

The dominant framing of the political corporate social responsibility (CSR) discussion challenges the traditional economic conception of the firm and aims to produce a paradigm shift in CSR studies wherein the traditional, apolitical view of corporations’ roles in society is replaced by the political conception of CSR. In this paper, we show how the major framing of the political CSR discussion calls for a redirection to take international hard legal and moral regulations, as well as the need for the boundaries between business and politics into account.

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Notes

  1. In this paper, we understand CSR to be an umbrella term for the academic debate and business practice that addresses the existence and management of business firms’ social responsibilities (see Matten and Moon 2008; Lindgreen et al. 2012).

  2. In this paper, terms such as “liberal” and “republican” refer to the schools of thought in political philosophy. Thus, our use of these terms is different from everyday political language in the USA where “liberal” often refers to the “leftist” and “republican” to “right wing” political positions.

  3. Naturally, not all political economies are regulated market economies and we also have conceptions of society where there are no real boundaries between the political and economic spheres of society (e.g., communism or anarcho-capitalism) or where the boundaries between the political and business spheres of society are, to a large extent, blurred (e.g., market socialism or libertarianism).

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Acknowledgments

The authors are indebted to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and very helpful reviews and guidance. The paper has been presented at various conferences and research seminars at Aalto University School of Business, University of Helsinki, SCANCOR at Stanford University, ESADE Business School, EBEN Annual Conference 2013, Society for Business Ethics Annual Meeting 2013. We thank participants in these conferences and research seminars for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. In particular we would like to thank Martha Nussbaum, Esther Hennchen, Jennifer Goodman, Arno Kourula, Sareh Pouryousefi, Ben Wempe, Pasi Heikkurinen and Udo Zander for their valuable comments and support. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Liikesivistysrahasto - The Foundation for Economic Education, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, and Helsinki School of Economics Foundation.

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  1. Aalto University School of Business, Aalto University, Box 21210, 00076, Helsinki, Finland

    Jukka Mäkinen & Eero Kasanen

  2. ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain

    Eero Kasanen

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  1. Jukka Mäkinen
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Correspondence to Jukka Mäkinen.

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Mäkinen, J., Kasanen, E. Boundaries Between Business and Politics: A Study on the Division of Moral Labor. J Bus Ethics 134, 103–116 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2419-x

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