Materializing Power to Recover Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

Through the development of CSR ratings, metrics and management tools, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is currently materialized at an unprecedented scale within and across organizations. However, the material dimension of CSR and the inherent political potential in this materialization have been neglected. Drawing on insights from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the critical discussion of current approaches to power in CSR studies, we offer an alternative sociomaterial conceptualization of power in order to clarify how power works through materialized forms of CSR. We develop a framework that explains both how power is constituted within materialized forms of CSR through processes of ‘assembling / disassembling’, and how power is mobilized through materialized forms of CSR through processes of ‘overflowing / framing’. From this framework, we derive four tactics that clarify how CSR materializations can be seized by marginalized actors to ‘recover’ CSR. Our analysis aims to renew CSR studies by showing the potential of CSR for progressive politics