Activism and Abdication on the Inside: The Effect of Everyday Practice on Corporate Responsibility

Abstract

While mainstream CSR research has generally explored and argued for positive ethical, social and environmental performance, critical CSR scholars argue that change has been superficial—at best, and not possible in any substantial way within the current capitalist system. Both views, however, only address the role of business within larger systems. Little attention has been paid to the everyday material CSR practice of individual managers. We go inside the firm to investigate how the micro-level acts of individual managers can aggregate to drive transformation of the macro-level business logic. We draw on the strategy-as-practice approach to organize our research. The study reveals two orient..