Engineering corporate social responsibility: elite stakeholders, states and the resilience of neoliberalism

Abstract

This article aims to introduce corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an ideational concept that is being globally and regionally engineered by an epistemic community of elite stakeholders that include business, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and government. The concept of CSR engineering seeks to address gaps in the literature that neglect the emergence of a highly integrated network of elite brokers committed to neoliberal ideology and the manufacturing of ethical corporate governance. Conclusions are drawn from 60 semi-structured interviews with key CSR stakeholders and well over 250 ‘off-the-record’ conversations held at six industry-led conferences. The findings suggest that when powerbases within the elite networks are exposed, the Western nation-state is revealed as the most dominant stakeholder.