Designing the Tools of the Trade: How corporate social responsibility consultants and their tool-based practices created market shifts

Abstract

Combining insights from the sociology of markets and studies of consultants, this article examines the tool-based practices by which market actors enable the agencing of the supply and demand of the market in ways that shape the market’s trajectory. Building on 31 interviews and a rich set of secondary data, we provide an analysis of the development of a market for consultancy products and services for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the province of Quebec (Canada). Through analytical induction we identified six tool-based practices by which consultants contributed to the agencing of the market, and our results show how these practices collectively created market shifts. Our analysis offers new insights into the processes by which consultants’ tool-based practices produce market shifts, embed environmental and social concerns within market mechanisms, and ‘vascularize’ markets.

Rethinking professionalization: A generative dialogue on CSR practitioners1

“…Jean-Pascal Gond: From different research projects Gond 2014, 2018;Ghadiri et al 2015;Gond et al 2018a), we found that CSR practitioners from different fields (responsible investing, CSR consultancy, and CSR management) resemble more to each other than to their organizational peers. They are 'like-minded' professionals, who share a strong progressive value-set, have acquired a growing knowledge-base, and are affiliated with similar fieldlevel associations (e.g.…”

“…CSR practitioners: reflecting and foreshadowing new ways toward professionalism In recent years, a growing number of scientific publications have been focusing on the phenomenon of CSR practitioners (Bondy 2008;Tams and Marshall 2011;Wright and Nyberg 2012;Strand 2013;Brès and Gond 2014;Mitra andBuzzanell 2017, 2018;Risi and Wickert 2017;Wickert and de Bakker 2018), especially as CSR literature faces an emerging 'micro-turn' (Gond et al 2017;Jones and Rupp 2018;Wang et al 2016). However, knowledge on these practitioners is still scant.…”

“…These in-house practitioners often rely on the services of external CSR consultants to deliver their organizational mandate (Risi and Wickert 2017;Gond, Cabantous, and Krikorian 2018a). Consultants are a key facet of the emerging CSR profession.…”

“…We have empirical bases to argue that CSR is an emerging occupation, but whether it is a rising profession is still debatable. Based on a functionalist view on professionalism, CSR, along with other new corporate hybrid professions, would not meet the requisite criteria: CSR practitioners struggle to establish their internal legitimacy and delineate the boundaries of their mandate (Gond et al 2011(Gond et al , 2018a, they do not have a clear and legitimate jurisdiction, a well-delineated knowledge base, or a common goal of social closure (Risi and Wickert 2017). Some would argue that it is just another management fashion that will eventually pass (Zorn and Collins 2007;Jutterström and Norberg 2013;Guthey and Morsing 2014), or that we are talking about a new market (Vogel 2005;Furusten et al 2013) instead of a profession.…”

“…Jean-Pascal Gond: I think the question of authority relates also to the dynamics of institutionalization and we tend to overlook the fact that a lot of CSR topics are nowadays regarded as mainstream strategic topics by CEOs (Gond et al 2018a). CSR made its way into board rooms.…”