American Perspective on CSR

An American perspective oncorporate social responsibilityand the tenuous relevance ofJacques Derrida

The principal focus for this commentary is Jones (2007)

Richard T.DeGeorgen

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept

in search of specific content. There is no agree-

ment on exactly what it means, and what it

requires of which corporations in which societies.

Its demands vary from society to society, from

industry to industry, and sometimes from firm to

firm. In this way, it differs from the demands of

ethics or morality, although it is sometimes

identified with them. Moreover, both CSR and

business ethics have a different cast in Europe and

in the United States. This is not surprising, and is

a function of the different social structures and

cultural milieu.

CSR, as the name implies, deals with respon-

sibilities that either a corporation has to society

or responsibilities that society imposes on cor-

porations. Because corporate structures are

different in most countries of Europe from those

in the United States, it is appropriate that

the expectations placed on corporations by

different societies differ. Corporations are more

closely integrated into the social fabric in

Europe, health care is socialized, workers’ social

benefits are typically more robust than in the

United States, and higher unemployment rates

are accepted as a trade-off. Of course, there

are broad areas of overlap, such as respect for

human rights and other ethical requirements, but

many other social expectations, for instance

with respect to philanthropy or the donation

of employee volunteer service to the community

areas, differ.

Those in the United States who pursue business

ethics typically use one or more of the standard

ethical theories to perform their evaluations,

argue for new practices, or morally condemn

existing practices, such as the use of slave or child

labour. The standard theories include those of

Kant, Mill, Aristotle, Rawls, the pragmatists, the

feminists, and theories of rights and of justice. All

of them in one way or another can be seen as

placing their emphasis on individual morality.

This fits well with the individualistic approach to

business found in the United States and with the

kinds of moral arguments found in the media and

popular speech.nUniversity Distinguished Professor, Department of Philosophy,

University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA.

r 2008 The AuthorsJournal compilation r 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA74

Business Ethics: A European ReviewVolume 17 Number 1 January 2008

Absent from the list are contemporary Eur-

opean ethical theorists, who for the most part are

either unknown or ignored by those in the United

States. The sole exception might be the views of

the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, who

is nonetheless scarcely known in the United States

outside of academic circles. Given the European

emphasis in business ethics on structures and

systems, and the notion of codetermination by

workers and management within corporations,

Habermas’s view captures, explains, and justifies

European practice, and makes sense of the

experience of those in business there. Nonetheless,

insofar as he argues for a dialogical (or discourse)

approach to ethics (e.g. Habermas 1983), in which

all affected parties are to have an effective voice in

choosing a policy, his position has been indirectly

integrated into the approaches of many American

writers as well. Jacques Derrida is among those

who are absent from the US CSR and business

ethics literature. Campbell Jones is critical of

those in the United States in both CSR and

business ethics for not taking advantage of what

Derrida’s writings have to offer, and Jones claims

both would be better if Derrida were included, or

if his became the dominant approach.

To highlight some of the differences between

the US and European approaches, I shall start by

presenting a picture of CSR that attempts to

explain its present status by looking at how it has

developed in the United States from the 1960s to

today. I shall then distinguish CSR from the

related but independent development of business

ethics in the United States. Finally, I shall raise

the question of the relevance of the writings of

Derrida, especially as presented by Campbell

Jones, to these enterprises as seen from an

American perspective.

CSR

There are many views of CSR. Four different

stories emerge from the writings of Archie Carroll

(Carroll 1991, 1999, Schwartz & Carroll 2003),

William Frederick (2006), Richard Marens (2004),

and Jones (2007). Mine is another view, different

from both Jones’s and from those who identify

with CSR and its history. It is also a different story

from what might be told about CSR in Europe.

CSR is a concept that first appears on the scene

after World War II. It came into prominence in

the 1960s in the United States. America in the

1960s was characterized by a remarkable number

of grass roots movements that targeted big

business corporations. Following WWII, US

industry was the only one not devastated by

war. European and Japanese firms had to rebuild,

sometimes from scratch. The Marshall Plan and

US aid helped redevelopment. But during the

1950s, US industry was dominant in the world

and it was solidifying its position in the 1960s,

expanding its global reach. Industry, moreover,

grew large enough to inflict damage on the

environment on a scale previously unimaginable

as the chemical industry developed.

Environmentalists became vocal critics of in-

dustry. Animus against the US war in Vietnam

gave rise to attacks on the military–industrial

complex, in which industry and the military were

viewed as a whole. The Civil Rights Act gave legal

status to complaints about sexism and racial and

other forms of discrimination in the workplace.

Consumers added to the barrage of charges

against corporations, and workers began to assert

claims to workers’ rights that society had pre-

viously not acknowledged. Corporations were

under siege on many fronts.

The reaction of many large corporations was to

defend themselves and to seek to regain public

support by engaging in and publicizing their

positive actions. These were presented under the

label of CSR. What this meant was defined by

each corporation or industry to highlight what it

did that benefited the public. Oil companies

started emphasizing their protection of the

environment. Extraction and logging industries

publicized their reclamation and reforestation

efforts. Others pointed to their philanthropic gifts

and to their positive contributions to the neigh-

bourhoods in which they were located. CSR was

thus a tool developed by business in response to

critics.

Businesses, however, soon found that they

could not control the CSR agenda, and that their

critics adopted the concept to impose their own


r 2008 The AuthorsJournal compilation r 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 75

demands on corporations. Those voicing the

demands were frequently non-profit organizations

(NGOs) and various vested interest groups. They

voiced their demands as if they were the demands

of the whole society, even if they represented a

small number of concerned parties. In many

instances, critics demanded that corporations take

on the failures of government, for instance by

redeveloping the inner cities. Milton Friedman’s

often-cited article was in part a response to such

demands (Friedman 1970). He gave voice to a

number of businesspeople who felt an incompat-

ibility between their business responsibilities and

the new demands that were being thrust upon

them.

The conflict was reflected in business schools,

which introduced courses on Business and Society

and on CSR. Those who studied CSR sometimes

framed the responsibilities of business in terms of

the responsibility of business to its shareholders

and to society to make a profit, the legal

requirements society places on business, the social

demand that businesses and business people

behave ethically, and the requirement that business

give something back to society, typically by way of

philanthropy. In addition, corporations sometimes

took on a variety of activities they presented as

socially beneficial as a means of burnishing their

public image and increasing their sales.

I have already mentioned that CSR is ill defined

and there is great disagreement about what is

actually appropriately demanded of corporations

by society. I suggest that in trying to gain a clearer

perspective on CSR, we start by emphasizing that

corporations are the creation of society (see De

George 2007). Unless they are seen as such, it is

difficult to justify society’s placing requirements

on them. Through the institution of incorporation

society allows members of a group to limit their

financial liability or exposure. This is a special

privilege, and it makes sense for society to grant

this only if it gets something in return. What it

expects in general in return from for-profit

corporations is that they develop society’s wealth

by providing goods and services, and by creating

employment. Hence, it makes sense to say that

society expects businesses to produce a profit, or

to succeed, because only by so doing can they

produce and provide what society needs. This is

independent of the fiduciary responsibility of

corporate boards to look after the financial

interests of the corporation’s investors.

Society expresses its demands on corporations

most clearly through its laws. And beyond law,

there are public expectations and the limits

imposed by widely accepted moral norms. Some

practices, such as continuous guaranteed employ-

ment with a firm, are the expected norm in some

firms or industries in some societies, even though

not demanded by law. Philanthropy can be

viewed either as the fulfilment of an imperfect

duty, or as an act of charity, or as an instance of

noblesse oblige.

As the notion of CSR was developed in Europe,

it took on a different cast from that in the United

States, as I have suggested, because of the

different social structures and system. Among

other issues, the environment took on central

concern in a way it did not in the United States.

The issue of discrimination was differently

framed; Europe had not had the history of slavery

that the United States did, and that influenced the

CSR component in the United States. Other

differences arose from the differing social issues

that had to be addressed and the differing existing

structures to address them. Corporations reflect

the societies of which they are a part.

As business turned international with the

emergence of globalization, a new dimension of

CSR arose. If a multinational or a transnational

corporation from the United States operates in a

less developed country, does its CSR represent the

demands of those in the home country or those in

the host country or both? Are the corporate social

responsibilities of American and European and

Japanese corporations the same when they find

themselves in the same less developed country, for

instance, in Vietnam, or do they differ? Arguably,

their moral or ethical responsibilities are the same,

because these are not determined by the societies

from which they come. But corporate social

responsibilities, to the extent that they are not

ethical or moral responsibilities, reflect the

expectations and demands of the societies in

which the corporations are found and/or where

they operate.


76r 2008 The Authors

Journal compilation r 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Society can impose demands on corporations

that go beyond the law. These expectations or

demands might arise from considerations of what

is sometimes disparagingly called conventional

morality. Ignoring or eschewing any claims to

applying ethical norms to business, society and

critics can still constrain business in a variety of

ways other than by law, for instance by social

pressure, by moral sanctions (such as boycotts

and publicizing harmful corporate actions), by

pressure groups in civil society, and by agitating

for changes that, unless made, would lead to even

harsher demands that would be legally imposed.

How one teases out what a society expects of

corporations, beyond what is written into law, is a

source of conflicting views and claims. Some

vested interest groups capture some of the general

expectations of many people, while others reflect

the interests of only specific groups. How one

argues that one’s claims about CSR are actually

society’s demands is not only not clear, but few

even attempt to justify their claims, relying on

intuition or attractive sounding slogans. Jones

and his co-authors fare no better here than many

others, for instance, when they say, ‘Think, for

example of the pharmaceutical companies that

refuse to provide anti-retroviral drugs to Africa,

where many thousands are dying of AIDS, while

they publish glossy brochures and slick websites

promoting their CSR’ (Jones et al. 2005: 123–

124). Yet how much are pharmaceutical compa-

nies rightfully expected to donate to solving the

AIDS crisis in poor countries of Africa, why does

the burden fall only on them, and how should the

burden of caring for those with AIDS be

equitably divided? Placing all the responsibility

on pharmaceutical companies is popular and easy

to do, because it involves no cost to oneself, even

in the form of taxes. But whether that is a social

responsibility of such companies, and only of such

companies, requires analysis and arguments or

reasons in support of one’s claims.

Business ethics and ethical theory

The struggle over the content of CSR was the

classic struggle of corporations and their critics.

Neither side had any principled systematic way of

arguing that their position was correct, and the

various demands and corporate actions – each

perhaps admirable in some way – appeared to be

ad hoc. It is not surprising that the 1970s gave rise

to the concept of business ethics in the United

States.

The term ‘business ethics’ is used in the United

States in three different but interrelated ways that

can be viewed as three interrelated strands (see De

George 2006a). One goes back as far as the

beginning of business and says that ethics applies

to business: that transactions should be fair, that

goods should not be misrepresented, that con-

tracts should be honoured, that businesses should

pay fair wages, and so on. This is the popular

notion of business ethics, which amounts to the

notion of ethics in business. The second strand,

which developed in the 1970s, is business ethics as

an academic field. The attempt of academics,

primarily philosophers, was and is both to

examine the ethical legitimacy of business, and

to provide ethical criteria by which the actions of

corporations can be evaluated, and where neces-

sary pressured to change. The third strand is the

business ethics movement as adopted by corpora-

tions, which consists of the trappings of ethics

being incorporated into the corporate structure

through the adoption of codes, the introduction

of training in business ethics for employees, the

establishment of corporate ethics officers, and the

like. The impetus for this came especially from

business scandals in the United States in the

1980s, the popular reaction they generated, the

danger of the public’s losing faith and trust in big

business, and the United States Government’s

initiating various requirements, especially the

1991 Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Corpora-

tions.1 In many US corporations, the Ethics

Officer deals with ethics within the corporation

and is separate from the CSR office.

The nature and role of ethical theory in business

ethics is often misunderstood even by some of

those who include ethics within the scope of CSR.

All ethical theories start from the same place. Just

as scientific theories start from natural phenom-

ena, so ethical theories start from the phenomena

of human moral experience. This is what they



attempt to explain, perhaps justify, and in part

systematize and revise.

Every society has a morality, or a set of actions

it considers importantly right or wrong, a set of

values that it believes are worth pursuing, and a

set of virtues or habitual ways of acting that it

attempts to inculcate in its members.2

The function of an ethical theory, on this view,

is to make sense of our common human and

individual moral experience. It attempts to

systematize the moral norms and both explain

them and provide some criterion or criteria in

terms of which they can be evaluated and justified

or, if necessary, revised. If it provides certain

kinds of criteria, those criteria are a means or a

test of the validity of the norms and provide a way

of deciding whether new practices or values are

morally acceptable.

Because all ethical theories start from the

conventional morality found in society, all of

them provide a justification for prohibitions on

murder, theft, perjury, rape, incest, and so on. If

any theory justified these actions as morally

acceptable, it would lose its credibility as a moral

theory. In any society, its members are more

certain that these actions are wrong than they are

of any theory that tells them the contrary.

As a result, Kant’s theory, which places its

emphasis on human reason, justifies and explains

the same basic actions as does Mill’s utilitarian-

ism, which places its emphasis on consequences.

Both of them consider virtue, but place it in a

secondary position, whereas Aristotle’s position

gives virtue more prominence. The textbook

versions of these and other theories that present

them as rivals often give the impression that one

can choose what one considers moral by choosing

one’s ethical theory. On the contrary, all the

ethical theories are in accord on the wrongness of

killing others, stealing, lying, and so on. Their

area of agreement is massive. The areas of

disagreement on the morality of practices are by

comparison small and marginal. In disputed

cases, those who disagree often resort not to

theory but to pre-theoretical moral intuitions to

argue their case.

Because ethical theory provides justification for

the norms of a society, a decision procedure for

deciding new cases, a way of systematizing and

ordering moral norms into a more or less coherent

whole, it provides a structure for moral or ethical

evaluation and for discussing moral obligations

and responsibilities that CSR lacks. Those who

wrote the early books on business ethics used the

theories of Kant, Mill, and Aristotle not because

of ideological reasons but because those theories

best captured, explained, and systematized the

way ordinary people argue about moral issues –

including issues in business. They argue in terms

of consequences (Mill), rights, duties and justice

(Kant), and virtue (Aristotle). Many in business

ethics in the United States are ethical pluralists,

and use two or more ethical theories in combina-

tion, e.g. constraining consequences by justice and

rights, and supplementing them by considerations

of virtue and character.

Once an ethical theory’s criteria have been

defended and accepted, they can be and are used

to evaluate all actions and all institutions of

society. Moral progress is made by coming to

learn new facts about the world and society that

change our previous view of the world, as well as

by developing a greater insight into what it is that

we hold as our core moral beliefs. If we believe

that human beings deserve respect, moral progress

consists in extending the notion of who deserves

respect beyond a narrow conception of the

members of our society to all of humankind. This

extension precludes any justification of slavery.

We also develop the ways in which we show

respect, and this provides a basis for developing

our notion of the rights, or the proper claims, of

all human beings. To the extent that portions of

conventional morality fall short of these insights,

they are properly criticized and usually eventually

changed.

Justifying moral norms provides cohesiveness to

a society. Critical ethics provides a source of

tension and a basis for reform. Traditional

societies are more resistant to reform than are

more open societies. Open societies, moreover,

are more tolerant of different lifestyles than are

traditional societies.

What is the case for ethics and morality in

general is the case as well for business ethics.

Business ethics is not a separate set of norms for




business. Those in business are no more allowed

to murder, steal, lie, and so on than anyone else.

Business ethics is concerned, among other issues,

with the application of ethics and ethical theory to

the evaluation and perhaps justification of the

foundations of business; of the economic systems

in which it is found (e.g. see De George 2006b,

chs. 6 and 7); of the economic–political–social

relations found in society and those that might be

preferable and should be developed; of the justice

and fairness of business practices; of the applica-

tion of human rights in the workplace; of the

impact of business on the environment, the

general pubic, consumers; of the fairness of

international economic arrangements and organi-

zations, such as the WTO and the World Bank;

of the proper use of non-renewable natural

resources; of the impact of technology on society;

of the obligations of rich countries to poor

countries and of the rich to the poor; and of the

special obligations that go with the great power

and wealth that large corporations have. Many

academics in business ethics in the United States,

we noted, have concentrated on the role and

responsibilities of managers, and more broadly of

corporations. Many in Europe, because of the

different role of corporations in society, have

focused on the justice of the system and the

respective roles of business and government

within the system that they share.

Given this understanding of ethics and business

ethics, corporations are often happy to draw up a

corporate code to teach to their employees. It is to

the benefit of the corporation if the employees are

reminded not to steal from the corporation, not to

falsify documents, not to accept bribes or gifts

that will adversely influence their business judge-

ment, to report infractions by others, to conserve

resources and treat customers with respect. Yet in

their external relations many companies are

reluctant to adopt the language of ethics and

prefer the language of CSR. This is understand-

able if we remember that ethics has a critical as

well as a justificatory role to play. Codes

frequently advise employees who have moral

questions or doubts or qualms about what they

are being asked to do or about company policy to

contact the corporate ethics office or the corpo-

rate counsel’s office to get the proper guidance

and answer. Rarely, if ever, does the code suggest

employees use their moral reasoning skills or

moral imagination and take moral responsibility

for their actions. Many corporations do not see it

to their benefit to emphasize critical ethical

thinking or to invite and encourage their employ-

ees to think about such issues as whether the ratio

between the pay of the CEO and that of the

average worker is fair, or whether the company’s

ads may be misleading, or whether the company,

by putting pressure on suppliers for low prices

and fast delivery, is causing the latter to adopt

questionable, if not outright unethical, practices

with respect to their employees. Critical ethical

thinking about the operations of the corporation

by employees can cause disaffection and could be

a hindrance to productivity. Of course it need not

be. But external critics are already vocal enough

without training one’s own employees to take on

that role, or to encourage the general public to do

so by emphasizing the language of ethics and

morality.

Avoiding the language of ethics, of course, does

not relieve a corporation of ethical responsibility.

But using surrogate languages helps dull the

critical edge of ethical scrutiny. Interestingly, the

UN Global Compact for Business3 contains ten

ethical principles and builds on the notion of

human rights. But neither ethics nor morality is

mentioned in the code, which uses the euphemism

of global corporate citizenship, an alternative

name for CSR.

By the 1980s, the notion of business ethics had

been adopted by some European academics and

business leaders. The term did not translate very

easily into some European languages. More

importantly, the issues that were typically raised

in the United States under the name of business

ethics and the societal demands and corporate

responses by American businesses did not trans-

late very comfortably to the European situation.

The reason, as with CSR, was that European

business was organized differently from American

business. The social climate in Europe was much

more socialistic than in the more individualistic

United States. The task of government in the

United States was to control business in various



ways to keep competition fair. In Europe, several

key industries, such as transportation and utilities,

were under national control, and the relation of

business and government was more one of co-

operation than in the United States.

As a result the issues were different. As far as

ethics was concerned, European academics

focused more on the structures of society and the

business–government relation than on the actions

of individual corporations or business executives.

The actions of managers, it was assumed, were

sufficiently constrained by the existing system of

laws and institutions.

Campbell Jones and Jacques Derrida

I believe that the above presentation of CSR and

business ethics from an American point of view is

not idiosyncratic, and is compatible with most

other presentations. It is in part historical, in part

justificatory, and in part critical. Given this

conception of CSR and business ethics – or

something fairly like it – Americans who write

in the two areas are typically happy to accept

anything that will help them in their endeavours,

but they are either sceptical or puzzled about what

Derrida has to offer them.

In a series of writings, Campbell Jones has been

critical of the American approaches to both CSR

and business ethics and has underlined their

failings by turning to the work of the French

philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). Derrida

was often said to be more influential in the

United States than in France, and more influential

in departments of literature and literary criticism

(where his academic appointments were) than in

departments of philosophy. His impact, direct and

indirect, on a number of fields, including literary

criticism, the social sciences, and even architec-

ture, has been considerable. His name and his

philosophy are generally associated with ‘decon-

struction’, an approach to the analysis of texts,

and the term ‘deconstruction’ has entered into

popular discourse, even though its meaning there

is usually very different from that found in

Derrida’s writings. At least on one reading,

Derrida’s deconstruction involves looking for

hidden contradictions or fissures in the founda-

tions of thought. Seemingly accidental or margin-

al aspects of a text can be found by close analysis

to undermine the main intent of the text. A result

is a general attack on foundationalist thinking,

which has been characteristic of Western thought

since the time of the Greeks. Texts have multiple

meanings, and none of them is the ‘real’ or ‘right’

one. As a result a deconstructivist approach to

any text or topic resists the obvious and accepted

meaning or interpretation, thus unsettling and

calling into question accepted beliefs and

presuppositions.

As the term ‘deconstruction’ suggests, Derrida

and his followers were not and are not interested

in constructing systems or in replacing existing

systems and structures with new ones of their

devising. Hence, one can appropriately ask what

the approach of Derrida or of his followers can

add to the concept and practice of CSR or more

broadly to ethics in general or to business ethics in

particular.

Derrida never turned his attention specifically

to CSR or to business ethics, but Campbell Jones

has taken on the task. In his paper, ‘Friedman

with Derrida’, Jones (2007) presents an introduc-

tion to Derrida’s thought, method, and style via a

series of reflections on Friedman, Derrida, and

CSR. In an earlier paper, ‘As if business ethics

were possible, ‘‘within such limits’’ . . .’, (Jones

2003) and a book, For Business Ethics (Jones et al.

2005), he applies the approach to business ethics.

The question for many readers, however, is

whether he is joining in the enterprise in which

they are engaged or whether he in fact wants them

all to engage in a different enterprise, which he

calls by the same name, but that is radically

different in intent and detail. If the latter is in fact

the case, then he has the burden of showing why

they should engage in his enterprise rather than

the one which goes by the names of CSR and

business ethics.

Jones’ Friedman paper might appear to some

who are unfamiliar with Derrida as puzzling. As

some ask when reading Derrida, when reading

Jones one might also ask about the text: why does

it not simply state clearly what it holds and

present the arguments supporting its claims? The




simple answer, I assume, is that it says exactly

what it means, just as Derrida does. But what it

says is not said in the usual expected way. If it

could be stated baldly, it would be false. Any

attempt to state Jones’ point simply would reduce

his complex, dialectical, fluid, and pregnant

cogitations to static, flat truisms, or more

accurately, falsehoods. Nevertheless, Jones’s ana-

lysis, while elusive, can be both evocative and

provocative. It evokes at some places Hegel and at

others Marx. His focus in Friedman on the

opposition of business and labour evokes the

master–slave dialectic in Hegel. His claim that

Friedman’s position is already deconstructing

itself evokes the notion that Marx develops in

Capital that capitalism contains within itself the

seeds of its own destruction. Yet Jones’s analysis

of Friedman, although novel and interesting, is

not the only one possible. He sees a lapse and an

inconsistency between Friedman’s claims about

CSR in Friedman’s article, in which he refers to

CSR in ‘a free society’, and the same claims in

Friedman’s book, in which he uses the same

words to refer to CSR in ‘a free economy’. This

suggests to Jones that Friedman does not know

what he is talking about (Jones 2007). Jones does

not consider the possibility that Friedman knew

exactly what he was saying and that his claim

about the social responsibility of business is the

same whether one speaks of a free economy or of

a free society, which for him requires a free

economy. In this case there is no slippage or lapse.

Nonetheless, the explicit opposition between

capital and labour that Campbell underlines in

Friedman’s text describes a real opposition that is

lacking in many accounts of stakeholder theory,

where the aim is often to manage competing

interests.

In ‘Friedman with Derrida’, Jones provides an

example of the style of deconstructing as he has us

reconsider the notion of responsibility. He cor-

rectly underlines the fact that although many

people have written extensively on CSR, too few

of them have spent much time analysing, much

less deconstructing, the term or the concept

‘responsibility’.

The paper correctly points to the tensions and

difficulties in deciding among stakeholder claims.

It also points out that there are few answers that

are accepted by all. The claim, however, that

Derrida is ‘an important ally if CSR is to think the

difficulties that it has already begun to notice in

the concept of responsibility’ cries out for

explication. The reader wants help to understand

how he is an ally. What can we do with Derrida’s

categories that we cannot do without them? That

Derrida has produced ‘some of the greatest

philosophical work on responsibility that has

emerged from Europe in many years’ is a serious

claim. Yet the section of the paper on ‘responsi-

bility’ does not help the uninformed reader who is

interested in CSR very much.

The paper correctly demands that the reader

take seriously the notion of responsibility that is

contained in CSR. All too often, the notion of

responsibility is simply taken for granted. In

turning to Derrida’s notion of responsibility,

however, Jones leaves untouched a series of

related questions: does the combination of

responsibility with corporations and society yield

a new kind of responsibility other than traditional

moral and legal responsibility? The former usually

requires causal connection and intentionality.

That is, one must be the cause of the action or

of the result in question and one must have

produced it knowingly and willingly. Legal

responsibility is similarly characterized, with

intentionality being included in the legal doctrine

of mens rea. In both cases, there are excusing

conditions that diminish the blame or punishment

that one deserves for actions that adversely affect

others, and that similarly limit the praise one

deserves for actions that benefit others. What of

the responsibility in CSR? Does it reduce to moral

and/or legal responsibility? If not, how does it

differ from them, how are we to measure it, what

is its relation to praise, blame, shame, punish-

ment, reward, and other notions with which it

forms a conceptual net?

The approach that Jones gives to responsibility

does not answer these questions, but rather

suggests that they are inappropriate, because he

wishes to replace the traditional notions of

responsibility with that suggested by Derrida

and Levinas. Those interested in CSR, however,

will be perplexed to find that in the new proposed



notion, ‘responsibility involves undecidability’.

That is to put the matter paradoxically, as does

the statement ‘One is only responsible when one is

not sure if one has been responsible. If we have

the certainty that we are in The Good, then it has

slipped away’. A more mundane way that the

apparently similar idea has been put by others is

that whenever one makes a moral (or socially

responsible) decision, one always takes a moral

risk. One does the best one can, or one does the

right as one sees it at the time, with full

consciousness that it may not be the right thing

to do. The latter makes sense in a context in which

one distinguishes an objectively right action from

a subjectively right one. It is not clear that

Derrida recognizes any objectively right action,

and hence one is always unsure because there is

nothing to be sure about. What it means to make

a mistake in such a case seems to be to adopt a

sense of certainty about something that is

inherently uncertain. It appears that on Derrida’s

view, if a corporate manager decides to pay much

more than the going wage in a less developed

country and to ensure safe and healthy working

conditions, that decision is not one that the

manager can feel secure is better than the

alternative of running a sweatshop. And if he

does feel secure, he is mistaken. If that is the

proper conclusion, then those in CSR would be

understandably puzzled.

Levinas’s notion of responsibility ‘involves a

response to the other person, the singular other or

Other’. There are therefore no rules to follow or

duties prescribed. Whether this can be translated

into the context of a business is both the question

and the challenge. If it cannot, then those who

preach or take part in the movement of CSR are

involved in an impossible task. This is perhaps the

conclusion that the paper suggests. If so, it fails to

acknowledge an alternative, namely, to eschew

Levinas’s notion of responsibility as the kind that

CSR involves or is interested in. That kind may be

applicable between individuals. The task of CSR

is a different task, namely influencing those in

business to act in a way that is more positive in its

effects on human beings, on the environment, on

the common good than is often the case. Interpret

‘positive’ in any sense you wish. But taking

positive steps to promote positive change, as

many in the CSR have been attempting, resists the

negative characterization of their work that Jones

makes in noting ‘the impossibility, the radical

undecidability and the lack of coherence that rests

at the heart of CSR’ (Jones 2007). The paper deals

with texts, and the texts, as the paper correctly

states, are very varied and often hold or argue

conflicting views. Nonetheless, over the past

30 years, a case can be made that the critics of

business, including those in both CSR and

business ethics, have seen some changes on the

part of business that they can defend as socially

beneficial.

That the concept of responsibility in CSR needs

considerable careful work that it has not received

is beyond dispute. To the extent that Derrida and

Levinas offer alternatives to the standard ac-

counts, they deserve study.4 If that is Jones’s

message, who can complain? The unsettling aspect

of the act of deconstructing, however, is that we

seem never to get an answer, and that whenever

we arrive at an answer we are assured that it must

be wrong. This makes informed action difficult, if

not impossible, and reduces those in business,

who have to make decisions, or their critics, to the

position of an undecided Hamlet.

The questions Jones raises about our under-

standing or lack thereof of the concept of

responsibility in CSR should provoke us to think

carefully about the other two components of

CSR, namely corporations and society. As with

responsibility, the CSR literature takes these for

granted, as if they required no examination,

consideration, elucidation. In the 1980s, there

was a debate about whether corporations could

have moral responsibility.5 There has been no

such discussion about whether it makes sense to

ascribe CSR to corporations and, if it does, the

conditions under which it does.

Central to making sense of CSR should be a

discussion of what a corporation is, why it exists,

what its relation to society or the common good,

if any, is. Corporations are taken at face value,

even though they differ in formation and structure

and in the rights they enjoy from jurisdiction to

jurisdiction. For the purpose of assigning CSR,

are corporations to be considered as collectives or,




adopting a methodological individualistic posi-

tion, are they to be reduced to the individuals who

make them up? That decision makes a difference

in both how corporate social responsibilities are

to be ascribed and how they are to be assumed

and borne by the appropriate parties. The third

component, society, is likewise taken for granted,

even though there are many kinds of societies.

Thus, each part of the trio – corporations, society

and responsibility – deserves analysis, as do the

relations of the three, and the combination of the

three into a whole.

Without such analysis and clarification, do

many who use the term actually know what they

are talking about? Although Jones’s position

seems to suggest a negative answer, that answer

does not, oddly enough, even if correct, undo the

whole movement. The reason is that the aim of

many in the academic and critical side of CSR, as

well as some on the business side, see and use CSR

as a means of tempering the destructive and

rapacious tendencies of unregulated big business,

and have had some success in curtailing some

practices harmful to people. To the extent that it

has had any success in improving the lot of human

beings, CSR is a positive force in the business

arena, even if poorly understood by its practi-

tioners, even if rife with irresolvable conflicts, and

even if it is in the process of deconstructing itself.

If we turn from CSR to business ethics, the

latter fares equally poorly in Jones’s writings. Yet,

like the writings of Derrida, much of what they

say remains enigmatic, far from clear, and

suggestive rather than definitive. They are also

programmatic, and so incomplete, even in

conception.

In his paper ‘Friedman with Derrida’, Jones

refers to the views of business ethics by Willmott

(1998), Hugo Letiche (1998), Michael Kerlin

(1998), and Raymond MacKenzie (2000), who

approach business ethics from a Derridian point

of view. Campbell Jones’s own work in this area

(Jones et al. 2005, Jones 2007) can be helpfully

seen as the backdrop for his CSR paper. His view

of business ethics as found in the writings by

others is hardly favourable, because he says that

while holding great promise, ‘it seems compro-

mised to its very core’ (Jones et al. 2005: 2). What

is puzzling about his book is how he and his

fellow authors know justice from injustice so well

and know that the present structures are unjust,

when he seems to agree with Hugo Letiche, who

‘has drawn on Derrida to argue that any specific

assertion of justice is always unjust, and that

justice is therefore always singular, situational and

circumstantial’ (Jones 2007). Yet somehow they,

like the rest of us, know that stealing from

pension funds, false accounting, sweatshop

labour, manipulative marketing, and a host of

other practices are wrong (e.g. Jones et al. 2005:

130, 138). What is required, among other things,

according to Jones, is for those in business ethics

to rid themselves of their ‘manic enthusiasm’ for

‘rationalized global capital’ (Jones et al. 2005:

140). The negative view of existing efforts by

others who have been writing in business ethics

and have failed to embrace the approach of

Derrida and Levinas is not the only picture there

is. As in the previous section, this is not the only

possible point of view, nor has it been shown to be

necessarily preferable to others.

As Jones points out emphatically, Derrida does

not have or present an ethical theory. His aim is

not to explain and justify any existing morality,

conventional or otherwise, or to propose an

alternative morality. He eschews the task adopted

by Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Marx, or Rawls. He in

fact throws into doubt that task and its results,

not to discard or replace them, but to question

them. Because he questions foundationalism in

any aspect of thought, he questions the founda-

tions of morality. For this reason he is sometimes

thought to be a relativist, or a nihilist, both of

which labels he rejects. Yet how we as individuals

or as a society or as the totality of humankind are

to think about and decide upon what is right and

what is wrong, and what these terms mean,

remain problematic. This is a conclusion with

which a follower of Derrida would not be

unhappy, although it does not help a business

person, or anyone else, decide what to do. Helping

one decide what to do, however, is not the task

Derrida sets out for himself.

Consider the various deconstructivist moves

Jones makes in his paper ‘As if business ethics

were possible, ‘‘within such limits’’ . . .’ and the



conclusions one might be tempted to draw from

them. I say ‘tempted to draw from them’ because

part of the deconstructive approach assumes there

is no definitive meaning of terms and text to be

found or from which to proceed. Any comment I

make on the text and its implications, therefore,

must be made with that caveat.

Jones tells us that Derrida ‘sets out to reframe

ethics and categories with which ethics has been

thought’ (Jones 2003: 225). Following Levinas,

‘the ethical relation is non-reciprocal and expects

nothing in return. The instant I expect reciproca-

tion I am in the realm of calculation of my own

advantage and am thinking of myself rather than

the Other’. (Jones 2003: 227) Nor does this

relation allow for the notions of duty or law –

for instance, the Ten Commandments. Clearly,

this is a reforming notion of ethics, at least to

some extent. Ethics on this view seems to be

completely altruistic or other oriented. Instead of

each counting for one, including oneself, the

ethical is completely other oriented. Commutative

justice, which involves exchanging equals for

equals, has no place here. Nor do human rights,

if we assert them for ourselves. Now this may or

may not be an admirable attitude, depending on

what else it involves. But it is not the ordinary

conception of ethics. This forces us to ask: what is

it the relation that we previously thought con-

stituted the ethical? Do we have to give it up? Do

we rename it? Or contrary-wise, why not retain

the term ‘ethics’ for the traditional meaning and

call this new reformed relation by some other

name, for instance, what is ordinarily thought of

as an unconditioned relation of love for another?

Why transfer all the connotations of ‘ethics’ and

‘ethical’ to this newly conceived relation just

because Levinas or Derrida or someone else

proposes that we do so? How well does the

proposed reform of the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘ethical’

cohere with our moral experience? Unless the

proposed reform captures the human moral

experience better than the present theories, we

have no need for, and no impetus to adopt, the

reforms.

What Derrida says about decision coheres with

our ordinary sense of the term insofar as to decide

one must have choices or possibilities to decide

between. But it does not seem to follow, as

Derrida says, that one cannot simply be following

a rule. For one can decide whether or not to

follow or obey a rule. If this is not a real choice

for Derrida, then the moral person is not one,

who, following Aristotle’s analysis, is virtuous

because he has developed the habit of acting

virtuously. If faced with the choice between them,

Aristotle’s account seems to capture the phenom-

enology of moral experience better than

Derrida’s.

What are the implications for business ethics?

Jones gives us some hints and proposes a project

to help determine the limits of business ethics. It is

clear from the account of Derrida’s approach to

ethics that we have already seen that its applic-

ability to business is minimal at best. Applied to

anything that might be called business ethics it

results in business ethics being what critics some-

times claim it is, namely, an oxymoron. Speaking

of a corporation opening itself up to the Other

makes little sense. Businesses are engaged in

production and exchange. For-profit organiza-

tions are by definition self-interested entities. They

are not formed to give away what they produce as

gifts. They do not open themselves up hospitably

and risk being taken advantage of by anyone who

chooses to do so. If these are the characteristics of

the ethical, then applying the term to corporations

is simply mistaken. This means in turn that the

public is mistaken in its ethical outcries when

fraud is uncovered in a firm, and the ordinary

person makes a category mistake when he or she

says that it is unethical or unfair for CEOs to be

paid millions of dollars at the same time that the

stock price goes down and a sizable potion of the

workforce is laid off without warning. Neither a

corporation’s actions nor the actions of indivi-

duals acting for a corporation fall under any

ethical rules, because there are no ethical rules,

and if there were, they would not apply to

corporations.

As Jones argues, Kantian, utilitarian and

Aristotelian approaches to business ethics, which

consist in applying those ethical theories to

business, all fail to capture the truly ethical as

Derrida describes it. But given Derrida’s

characterization of the ethical, this needs little




argument. The questions are why one should

accept that characterization, and why one should

think his view of the ethical is applicable to

businesses and their activities. On Derrida’s own

terms, there is no ‘true’ meaning of terms waiting

to be found. All can be interpreted and dissected,

including the one he proposes, as I have briefly

indicated. I think there are good reasons not to

give up the use of conventional moral or ethical

language with respect to business. A major one is

that respect for human rights, for instance, seems

to be an ethical notion with great force. To

abandon it because it does not live up to the

meaning of ethical that Derrida describes is to

abandon it and the good achieved by using it too

easily and arbitrarily.

Although this seems to follow from what

Derrida says, Jones claims that deconstructing

business ethics is not ‘against business ethics’

(Jones 2003: 241). Its aim is not to destroy it but

‘to open it to the aporias that infect the purity of

its concepts’ (p. 241). He wishes to navigate

between the view that business ethics is simple,

solved, and justifies business practices on the one

hand, and on the other the view of those who

simply dismiss business ethics out of hand. Each

of the two positions is an extreme, and many in

business ethics share his desire to steer between

them. The question, then, is whether the approach

of Derrida can throw useful light on the project. I

have already indicated doubts because of his

characterization of the ethical.

The same is true of Jones. His own position is

also in the process of deconstruction. On the one

hand, he wants to change business practices with

respect to exploitation, pollution and other areas;

on the other, his adherence to Derrida’s approach

does not permit such wholesale condemnations or

judgements about what is right and wrong. His

book is against business ethics before it is for

business ethics. This is of course an equivocation

and not a contradiction, for he is against business

ethics as most of those who write in the field

approach it, while he is in favour of a revised,

more critical notion that goes beyond all the limits

others allegedly adhere to.

I and a great many others are open to help and

insight in to the struggle for fairness, justice and

human betterment. If, despite indecisiveness and

‘the aporias that infect the purity’ of the concepts

of business ethics and CSR, it makes sense to

speak of human flourishing, of better and worse

actions and human conditions, of respect for

human dignity, of justice, then whatever supports

these should be accepted. If the flawed enterprises

of business ethics and of CSR do so, despite their

clay feet and limitations, they are activities worth

pursuing – as would be progressive and helpful

additions, corrections, or insights that deconstruc-

tion and any other view can provide. However,

more is needed than promises or projects. Both

CSR and business ethics are practical endeavours.

A valid test of any theory interpreting either of

them is the pragmatic one of whether that theory

is helpful in furthering their practical aim of

harnessing the potential of business to improve

the human condition. As I have already claimed,

those in CSR and business ethics have already

proven their worth and effectiveness, at least to

some degree. The onus is on Jones and other

followers of Derrida to show how, by using ‘the

categories that are made available in the . . .

writings of Jacques Derrida’ (Jones 2007), those in

CSR and business ethics can do, and do more

effectively, what they want to do and what they

cannot do without those categories. Until they do

so, the relevance of Derrida to CSR and business

ethics remains tenuous and elusive.

Notes

1. For the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and the

Amendments through 2006, see United States

Sentencing Commission, Federal Sentencing Guide-

line Manuals, available on-line at http://www.ussc.

gov/guidelin.htm.

2. Arguably, the basic moral norms of all societies are

similar, insofar as they express the kinds of actions

necessary for any society to exist. In all societies,

murdering members of one’s own society arbitrarily

is considered wrong; every society has some concept

of property and forbids stealing; communication is

necessary for every society and so truth is an

important component; societies require mutual aid

from members towards one another, respect for the



established rules, care for children, and so on. The

moral norms may be expressed in religious terms,

and justified in terms of their religious origin.

Religion in many societies has been a bearer of

morality. In the modern period, as in the period of

ancient Greece and Rome, philosophers have

sought to provide a philosophical rather than a

religious explanation and justification for the

morality that is socially held.

3. For the Global Compact, see http://www.

unglobalcompact.org/

4. Editor’s note: see Business Ethics: A European

Review, 16:3 (July 2007) for a special issue entitled

‘Levinas, Business, Ethics’, edited by Campbell

Jones.

5. The discussion was started by Peter French’s claims

about a corporation’s moral decision procedure

(French 1979) and John Ladd’s claim that corpora-

tions were simply machines or creatures of law to be

restrained by law (Ladd 1970), and a host of others

who adopted various versions of the conditions for

ascribing moral obligations to corporations and the

extent to which they are either moral agents or moral

actors or neither. For a collection of papers on

various views of the corporation as a possible moral

entity of some sort, see Curtler (1986).

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Documents

American Perspective on CSR