Toward a political conception of corporate responsibility: Business and society seen from a habermasian perspective

Abstract

We review two important schools within business and society research, which we label positivist and postpositivist corporate social responsibility ( CSR ). The former is criticized because of its instrumentalism and normative vacuity and the latter because of its relativism, foundationalism, and utopianism. We propose a new approach, based on Jürgen Habermas's theory of democracy, and we define the new role of the business firm as a political actor in a globalizing society.