Political Conditions for Corporate Social Voluntarism

Abstract:

Globalization is often thought to reduce state authority and empower market authority. Multinational corporations (MNCs) are frequiently perceived as free to move around the world as they seek to maximize profits, with little regard for local social needs. Such actions are viewed leading to a reduction of the political power of nation states. Yet, the picture is more complex and we can observe MNCs getting involved in various social activities, such as financing community projects, lobbying governments to act on global social issues, building private-public partnerships, and signing up for Codes of Conduct. Such actions are often referred to as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Business studies have made great advances in studying how the range of CSR activities have expanded on a voluntary basis. However, the political conditions under which MNCs choose corporate social voluntarism - understodd as the choice to extend support to new forms of collaboration and policies for the social protection of employees and their communities - remains underspecified. This project addresses this gap through an innovative methodological framework and 6 original case studies based around the experience of Danish firms abroad in 3 different country settings