Justifications for Corporate Responsibility

This chapter focuses on the normative origins of responsibility, how the ethical dimension of responsibility can be legitimized and justified and discusses the different arguments and moral theories used in corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. It presents and analyzes the arguments used to justify corporate engagement with regard to norms other than the pursuit of profit. Two types of argument are considered: instrumental justifications, based on a consequentialist approach to morality, according to which it is both profitable and rational to recognize corporate responsibility, and more deontological approaches to responsibility, which stress the origins of corporate rights and responsibilities. A considerable body of literature has been produced with the aim of justifying the “social” dimension of responsibility, using a variety of tools borrowed from the field of economic theory. The need for organizations to respect ethical principles is based on the existence of a positive correlation between CSR and economic performance.