Atlas: The Ideology of Corporate Social Responsibility and the Restructuring of the Third Sector by Gerd Mutz

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ISTR Sixth International Conference
Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004
Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

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The Ideology of Corporate Social Responsibility and the Restructuring of the Third Sector
by
Gerd Mutz
Projektgruppe Sozialforschung e.V. (Social Research Project Group)
Coauthors: Susanne Korfmacher, Daniel Schluchter

The global economic dynamics of the last 20 years, often described as ‘Globalisation’, have led to changing relations between different mechanism of societal integration like the social and the economic integration. One expression of this development is the emergence of the ideology - in terms of universal forms - of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), prominently as programs of Corporate Citizenship depicting the local commitment of companies. Certain forms of Corporate Citizenship, especially Corporate Volunteering and Corporate Partnership, have a substantive influence on the structure and the logic of action of the Third Sector.

There has been extensive research on Corporate Citizenship concentrating on the relevant economic actors, while the Third Sector organisations involved in this process have been mostly neglected by the academic and public discourse. It is an open question how they will react to these new conditions and how their organisational forms are effected. Therefore, we would like to highlight the impact and the consequences of Corporate Citizenship policies on the Third Sector organisations, especially with regard to programs intruding into their original field of competence. The question is in which way and to what extent Third Sector organisations are affected by Corporate Citizenship programs and how they respond to these challenging influences. It can be supposed that because of the practice of Corporate Citizenship rearrangements in the structure of the Third Sector are occurring. It is then of vital importance to examine whether the economic logic will gain prevalence in the Third Sector and whether the current processes of boundary diffusion will continue to increase.

As our empirical research indicates, the actual ways in which Third Sector organizations deal with these programs is dependant on a variety of variables which are heavily intertwined. Of crucial importance is the specific form of the relevant Corporate Citizenship program. Equally important are the self-images of the Third Sector organizations. Drawing on empirical studies in Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and Australia we expect that the cultural context in which these dynamics take place also plays a decisive role in this process.

Date received: September 30, 2003