Corporate Social Responsibility in Liquid Times: The Case of Romania

Georgiana Grigore,Andreea Vontea,Ogeday Celep,Sylvian Patrick Jesudoss,Mike Molesworth,Abdullah Hasan Basnawi

doi:10.1007/s10551-021-04926-w

Abstract

Existing scholarly work on corporate social responsibility (CSR) frequently emphasizes either normative/ethical claims about social progress or instrumental/strategic claims about corporate effectiveness, yet less often acknowledges the moral conditions of those undertaking CSR within a specific cultural context. In this paper, we draw attention to the social conditions in which CSR takes place and the related ethics of the subjects that must enact it. Our approach is to document the lived experiences of practitioners in Romania, a post-communist society. Drawing from fifty-three depth interviews with both corporate responsibility practitioners, and managers in non-profit organizations who together work on CSR projects, we describe their experiences of the social and organizational environment, the CSR practices that are undertaken in this context, and the intended and unintended consequences of such work. Using Bauman’s theorization of ethics, including adiaphora and moral distancing, and Borţun’s interpretation of Romanianness, we then theorize liquid CSR as an ambivalence between adiaphoric practice (instrumental morality, careerism and self-interest) and the moral impulse to do good, resulting in both intended (short-term promotion and competitive victimhood) and unintended consequences (a potential for corruption and collateral beneficiaries).

Highlights

Since the fall of communism, Central and Eastern European societies have been developing political and economic approaches that integrate Western norms, in part to achieve newly imposed EU standards (Soulsby & Clark, 2007; Soulsby et al, 2017; Stoian & Zaharia, 2012)
Both NGO and corporate participants noted personal achievements, along with their acknowledgement of significant limitations in making meaningful change happen. They would resort to statements like “this is how it is in Romania”, or “this is just how things work”, consistent with what Bauman and Donskis (2016) report as a feeling that “there is no alternative”, and with Borţun’s (2011) belief that Romanians too often accept a lack of progress as a characteristic of Romania
Whereas previous research seeks to consider either the strategic value of corporate social responsibility (CSR), or the morality that best underpins it, further deriving critique from both positions, we suggest that CSR practice may sometimes evade morality, failing to ‘do well by doing good’

Summary

Introduction

Since the fall of communism, Central and Eastern European societies have been developing political and economic approaches that integrate Western norms, in part to achieve newly imposed EU standards (Soulsby & Clark, 2007; Soulsby et al, 2017; Stoian & Zaharia, 2012). Policies and practices have been imported from developed European nations (Soulsby & Clark, 2007), including the responsible business practices of multinationals, especially through local subsidiaries (Stoian & Zaharia, 2012) and consistent with the adoption of US-style ‘explicit’ CSR as suggested by Matten and Moon (2008). Romania—our focus—provides a unique context that reveals aspects of CSR that are less observed in developed Western economies where the majority of CSR research has been undertaken

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion