Corporate social responsibility, juridification and globalisation: ‘inventive interventionism’ for a ‘paradox’

This paper proposes ‘inventive interventionism’ as a regulatory approach to incorporate substantive outcomes, stakeholder empowerment, effective disclosure and a global multi-stakeholder and multidimensional view of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social disclosure. Inventive interventionism also applies new paradigms of regulation that recognise CSR as one of the proximate engineers of efficient public governance and ultimate sources of socio-economic development. The paper adopts a transnational and comparative approach to regulatory CSR and situates the voluntary and prescriptive approaches in the wider regulation debate. It draws on reflexive law, responsive regulation, institutional and other theories to demonstrate that existing CSR regulations in several jurisdictions are not representative of the law's multidimensional and multidirectional nature. Inventive interventionism reflects a functional approach to the law–CSR dialectic relationship and contributes to the development of an analytical framework for CSR and reforming its national and global regulatory environment.