The Business Case for Corporate Social Responsibility

CSR is of particular relevance for strategic management and corporate marketing. The book describes its rise in Europe by exploring how and why the use of management rhetoric has acted as central means of gaining business acceptance. It provides a novel understanding of dynamics and aspects within the process of constructing the business case for CSR in the vital years 2004 to 2009. The extensive literature review and empirical research for this book are based on the author’s PhD thesis, and is ed in a multi-layered, longitudinal fashion. It involves innovative ways of inquiry like participant observation at CSR expert conferences and semantic analysis of non-financial reporting. The book also includes case studies of leading German and British firms. Readers find statements dismissed that CSR is a management fashion of only temporary nature. The book provides substance to the claim that translation processes create enacted realities and that organisations are in fact changing.