TY - JOUR
T1 - The institutionalisation of unaccountability
T2 - Loading the dice of Corporate Social Responsibility discourse
AU - Archel, Pablo
AU - Husillos, Javier
AU - Spence, Crawford
N1 - Funding Information:
Thanks to participants at research seminars given at Université Laval, the University of Alberta, HEC Paris, participants the 33rd Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association, Istanbul, 2010, Jesse Dillard, Henri Guenin-Paracini, Yves Gendron, Diane-Laure Arjaliès and David Cooper for comments on earlier versions of this paper. The Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia) (ECO2009-09937) provided financial assistance for this research.
PY - 2011/8
Y1 - 2011/8
N2 - This paper reports on an in-depth empirical study into recent government-led Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives in Spain. It is found, based on interviews and document analysis, that processes of stakeholder consultation relating to these initiatives are characterised by debate and a plurality of different viewpoints. However, this polyphony can be contrasted sharply with the institutional outcomes of these processes. Institutional outcomes represent the viewpoints of only a subset of the actors involved in the stakeholder consultation processes. It is consequently inferred that stakeholder consultation processes serve problematic functions: on one level, these processes legitimise dominant discourses on CSR by giving the impression that the latter are the outcome of a democratic dialogue that is free from power relations; on another level, these processes themselves show to heretic social actors the futility of their heresy and thus encourage those actors to actively adopt the dominant discourse. We conclude that business capture of Corporate Social Responsibility is ingrained into institutional processes in that domain. This raises serious questions regarding the potential for civil society actors to engage with and move the signifier of Corporate Social Responsibility in a more challenging direction.
AB - This paper reports on an in-depth empirical study into recent government-led Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives in Spain. It is found, based on interviews and document analysis, that processes of stakeholder consultation relating to these initiatives are characterised by debate and a plurality of different viewpoints. However, this polyphony can be contrasted sharply with the institutional outcomes of these processes. Institutional outcomes represent the viewpoints of only a subset of the actors involved in the stakeholder consultation processes. It is consequently inferred that stakeholder consultation processes serve problematic functions: on one level, these processes legitimise dominant discourses on CSR by giving the impression that the latter are the outcome of a democratic dialogue that is free from power relations; on another level, these processes themselves show to heretic social actors the futility of their heresy and thus encourage those actors to actively adopt the dominant discourse. We conclude that business capture of Corporate Social Responsibility is ingrained into institutional processes in that domain. This raises serious questions regarding the potential for civil society actors to engage with and move the signifier of Corporate Social Responsibility in a more challenging direction.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.aos.2011.06.003
DO - 10.1016/j.aos.2011.06.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:80054089029
SN - 0361-3682
VL - 36
SP - 327
EP - 343
JO - Accounting, Organizations and Society
JF - Accounting, Organizations and Society
IS - 6
ER -