Wobbling on a One-Legged Stool: The Decline of American Pluralism and the Academic Treatment of Corporate Social Responsibility

B. Readings (University in Ruins. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996) argued that universities have abandoned their original project of promoting a national culture and have tried to substitute by embracing globalization, but the vagueness and incoherence of the concept has failed to return purpose to the University. The academic treatment of corporate social responsibility illustrates this dilemma. For a generation after H.R. Bowen (Social Responsibilities of the Businessman. New York: Harper & Row, 1953) founded the field, scholars struggled to fit the concept within a national system of pluralistic power-sharing among a variety of institutions that would define and enforce standards of responsibility necessary for the general good of American society. That understanding changed in the nineteen eighties, shortly after corporate executives had united to an unprecedented degree to direct the power of government in their interests, influence the public agenda, and roll back the power of unions. In response, business ethicists began to reformulate corporate social responsibility as a voluntary practice on the part of these same executives. Since the Kantian and Lockean principles upon which this approach was based were themselves problematic, it is not surprising that the experience gained over the last generation casts doubt on the efficacy of this reliance on voluntary restraint and personal initiative. However, circumstances that include the failure of globalization to deliver on its promises may have changed sufficiently in recent years to revive interest in approaches that acknowledge the importance of countervailing power for encouraging greater corporate social responsibility.