Global CSR and "The Responsibility Paradox"

I'd like to link you to my very favorite academic paper on CSR - it's by some professors at the Univeristy of Michigan and it's called "The Responsibility Paradox: Multinational Firms and Global Corporate Social Responsibility." You can download it here.

This paper does an amazing job of following the social role of the corporation through time, from the late-18th century through today, and tying different trends together. For example, prior to globalization it was relatively easy to identify a firm's "community" - headquarters, manufacturing, retail and waste disposal would all happen in more or less the same place. It was easier to invest in the community, because the company itself could reap the rewards of that investment. This was the "factory town" model.

Over time, corporations have become what some would describe as a "nexus of independent contracts" - connecting a factory with a brand, a product with a market, and housing its official headquarters in an airport warehouse in some conveniently low-tax locale. So the question "to whom are corporations responsible?" becomes much more complex.

The authors (Gerald Davis, Marina Whitman, and Mayer Zald) say all this, and so much more, far more eloquently than I have here. If you read one "academic" paper this year, this wouldn't be a bad choice.