Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social practice, this article develops a novel approach to the study of corporate social responsibility (CSR). According to this approach, pro-social activities are conceptualized as social practices that individual managers employ in their efforts to attain social power. Whether such practices are enacted or not depends on (1) the particular features of the social field; (2) the individual managers' socially shaped dispositions and (3) their stock of different forms of capital. By combining these theoretical concepts, the Bourdieusian approach we develop highlights the interplay between the economic and non-economic motivations that underlie CSR, acknowledging influences both on the micro-and the macro-level, as well as deterministic and voluntaristic aspects of human behaviour.

ABSTRACT:In response to criticism of empirical or “positive” approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR), we defend the importance of these approaches for any CSR theory that seeks to have practical impact. Although we acknowledge limitations to positive approaches, we unpack the neglected but crucial relationships between positive knowledge on the one hand and normative knowledge on the other in the implementation of CSR principles. Using the structure of a practical syllogism, we construct a model that displays the key role of empirical knowledge in fulfilling a firm’s responsibility to society, paying special attention to the implications of the “ought implies can” dictum. We also defend the importance of one particular class of empirical claims; namely, claims from the field of economics. Even positive economic theory, which is often criticized for endorsing profits rather than values, can cooperate in intriguing ways with non-economic concepts in the implementation of CSR goals.

Around the turn of the millennium, a growing body of literature emerged that focuses on the relationship between religion and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Although the connection between religion and CSR seems obvious at first, the literature in this field yields conflicting results. This paper provides the first systematic review of the literature that deals with the relation between religion and CSR. We categorized the literature into a matrix, which distinguishes the level of analysis (micro/macro) on the one hand and types of approaches (normative/empirical) on the other. Results are clustered according to the religions they address to identify similarities between and locate trends in research.

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Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social practice this paper develops a novel approach to the study of CSR. According to this approach, pro-social activities are conceptualized as social practices that are employed by individual managers in their personal struggles for social power. Whether such practices are enacted or not depends on the (1)