Corporate power and social responsibility: lessons from the west

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility is fast becoming a fashionable phrase among businessmen, managers, management academics, economists, politicians, and the public at large. Before these diverse groups plunge into serious debate on this crucial issue, one could perhaps leaner from the long experience of Western countries, especially the U.S., on this subject. A detailed scrutiny of a selected sample of Western thought showed that two different and distinct groups existed. One group looked at the problem as corporate power to be contained, curtailed, or countervailed - the negative view; the other as corporate responsibility to be mobilized, channeled, and sustained through appropriate supportive efforts - the positive view. What the two distinct groups saw depended on the locus of their observation.