The Role of CSR in (Re)framing New Post-Colonial Relations: A Case from the South

Abstract

The political turn in the Euro-American management literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) attempted to go beyond the boundaries of corporate-based views regarding CSR, grounded on crude neoclassical economics. However, the political role of CSR in the diffusion of a particular type of inter-state cooperation through colonialist power relations has been largely neglected. Grounded on a Southern perspective, we ask how (political) CSR influence South- South relations? Therefore, we examine the political role of CSR in an illustrative case of a Latin American mining company operating in an African country. In this qualitative empirical investigation, we found out that the postcoloniality conditions were very much present in the company’s strategies, and that CSR has been used as the primary managerial tool to legitimize its agenda. In the end, we propose a re-theorization of political CSR from the Global South.