ABSTRACT:Deliberative democratic theory, commonly used to explore questions of “political” corporate social responsibility (PCSR), has become prominent in the literature. This theory has been challenged previously for being overly sanguine about firm profit imperatives, but left unexamined is whether corporate contexts are appropriate contexts for deliberative theory in the first place. We explore this question using the case of Starbucks’ “Race Together” campaign to show that significant challenges exist to corporate deliberation, even in cases featuring genuinely committed firms. We return to the underlying social theory to show that this is not an isolated case: for-profit firms are predictably hostile contexts for deliberation, and significant normative and strategic problems can be expected should deliberative theory be imported uncritically to corporate contexts. We close with recent advances in deliberative democratic theory that might help update the PCSR project, and accommodate the application of deliberation to the corporate context, albeit with significant alterations.

The major aim of this article is to show that John Rawls's theory of justice cannot be applied effectively to questions of business ethics and corporate governance. I begin with a reading of Rawls that emphasizes both the critical and pragmatic nature of his theory. In the second section I look more closely at the notion of society's "basic structure" and its place within Rawls's theory. In the third section, I argue that "the corporation" cannot be understood as part of this basic structure and is not, therefore, a subject of justice for Rawls or his interpreters. Finally, I show that Rawls's inability to speak to the corporation is a weakness, regardless of one's particular view on the corporation. I conclude by considering what Rawls's theory helps us to understand about the problems involved in integrating corporate governance, business ethics, and political philosophy.

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This introduction argues that the use of the concept of deliberative democracy in corporate social responsibility (CSR) research needs to be theoretically extended. We review three developments that have recently occurred in deliberative democracy theory within political science and philosophy: 1) the conceptualization of deliberative systems (macro level), 2) the considerations of mini-publics (micro level), and 3) the role of online deliberation. We discuss the challenges and prospects that incorporating these three developments into future CSR-related research creates. We thereby also introduce the articles in this special issue and show how they connect to each of the three developments. On the basis of this discussion, we outline the contours for a more general program of distributed deliberative CSR that enables CSR scholars to incorporate an updated understanding of deliberative democracy theory into their future work.

Contemporary discussions of the corporation tend to fall into one of two camps. The side that dominates much of public discourse is those who conceive of the corporation as purely economic. According to this view, corporations are “nexuses of contracts” that have no greater duties than to maximize profits for their shareholders and that should be given legal and political deference to do so. On the other side are those who conceive of the corporation in almost entirely political terms. In this view, corporations are created by government and exercise powers and privileges that are conceded to it by the state; governments have a responsibility to organize and constrain corporations such that they act for the benefit of society as a whole. This book offers a third way that sees the corporation as being both economic and political. It begins historically, by exploring and explaining the development and strength of the economic theory of the corporation. Despite their strength, such approaches miss the mark: while corporations exist largely to increase economic efficiency, they achieve this in ways that distinguish them from standard economic processes in markets. Corporations are not natural outgrowths of the free market, but institutions that use “norm-governed productivity”—social power, norms, and state-sanctioned authority—to effect economic cooperation that markets cannot. Corporations serve economic ends, but with political and social means. These facts suggest a radical rethinking of how corporations should be legally ordered, who should control them, and what sorts of obligations corporate managers have.