The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the instrumental perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in practice and theory by relying on sociological analyses of a well known organization: the Italian Mafia. Legal businesses might share features of the Mafia, such as the...

In contrast to content-based models of corporate social responsibility (CSR), we propose a process model of organizational sensemaking explaining how managers think, discuss, and act with respect to their key stakeholders and the world at large. We also propose a set of cognitive, linguistic,...

Past decades have witnessed the growing success of branding as a corporate activity as well as a rise in anti-brand activism. While appearing to be contradictory, both trends have emerged from common sources - the transition from industrial to post-industrial society, and the advent of...

This article proposes a middle range theory of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a classification scheme of the current CSR debate in theory and practice. There are four features of CSR types-Ideology, Legitimacy, Language, Leadership-while not exhaustive, provide a descriptive framework...