The Civil Company: Civil Economy and Corporate Social Responsibility in Dialogue

Abstract

Today there is growing need to overcome the traditional ethics of intentions and to develop an ethics of responsibility that judges the morality of a behavior considering its impact not only on the humanity living today but on the consequence bearers of the future, including all living beings and the earth. For this to occur, an integration of business ethics and spirituality in the workplace is increasingly necessary. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which is intended to maximize positive societal externalities and welfare has done a good job in reducing harm, but it has only recently begun to shift toward a more holistic model that guides toward human flourishing. Companies that can cultivate this connection and are able to identify work as a human factor are able to naturally integrate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) into corporate models. Starting from these premises the aim of this paper is to provide an understanding on the different Christian and Lutheran approaches of the notion of social responsibility and design an integrated framework helpful to shed new light on CSR strategies through a civil economics approach deeply linked to a Christian relational vision based on gratuitousness. To understand this idea, we analyzed the roots of the Protestant Anglo-Saxon capitalism and compared them with the Latin one. We then presented the Civil Economy approach and its historical roots, to shed light on CSR strategies from a Civil Economy perspective. We finally introduced an integrated Corporate Civil Responsibility (CCR) framework and highlighted practical implications for management and organization studies. We believe our contribution to the literature to be twofold. On one hand, we introduced a the new CCR model able to extend the knowledge on spirituality and business ethics literature related to CSR. On the other hand, we contributed to the Civil Economy debate by introducing a specific lens through which CSR practices can be viewed.