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- Title
Reconsidering Instrumental Corporate Social Responsibility through the Mafia Metaphor.
- Authors
Gond, Jean-Pascal; Palazzo, Guido; Basu, Kunal
- Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the instrumental perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in practice and theory by relying on sociological analyses of a well known organization: the Italian Mafia. Legal businesses might share features of the Mafia, such as the propensity to exploit a governance vacuum in society, a strong organizational identity that demarcates the inside from the outside, and an extreme profit motive. Instrumental CSR practices have the power to accelerate a firm's transition to Mafia status through its own pathologies. The boundaries of such instrumentalism are explored and lessons for future CSR research derived, with specific emphasis on a firm's social and normative embeddedness, taking into account the inherent challenge of regulating corporate behaviour in the global economy.
- Publication
Business Ethics Quarterly, 2009, Vol 19, Issue 1, p57
- ISSN
1052-150X
- Publication type
Academic Journal
- DOI
10.5840/beq20091913