Conceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility the Nature of Managerial Capture

This paper reports on an in-depth interview based examination of managerial conceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the Irish context. It locates itself within the debate surrounding the extent to which corporate management may capture social accountants’ efforts to promote a broad society-centred conception of CSR. While the perspectives reveal the complexity involved in conceiving of any agreed meaning of CSR (if this were ever possible), a prominent tendency to conflate and confuse social and economic responsibilities was exhibited. Openness to engagement was frequently deemed dependent on the capacity of corporations to control and capture the engagement process. However, despite widely highlighted structural constraints, many managers insisted that their personal values overrode any corporate imposed controls when considering CSR. Notwithstanding this, the overall findings suggest that, among this sample of managers, unless one can conceive of a ‘business case’ for CSR, critical engagement will be problematic and change resisted.