Embedding Power and Postcolonialism into the Discourse on Corporate Social Responsibility and

154 Pages·2016·1 MB·English

by  Maike Drebes

CSR matters! But for whom?
Embedding Power and Postcolonialism into the Discourse on Corporate
Social Responsibility and Discovering the Roots of Eurocentrism and
Exclusiveness in its Practical Implementation

DISSERTATION
der Universität St. Gallen,
Hochschule für Wirtschafts-,
Rechts- und Sozialwissenschaften
sowie Internationale Beziehungen (HSG)
zur Erlangung der Würde einer
Doktorin der Sozialwissenschaften

vorgelegt von

Maike Jennifer Drebes

aus

Deutschland

Genehmigt auf Antrag der Herren

Prof. Dr. Thomas Beschorner

und

Prof. Dr. Ludger Heidbrink

Dissertation Nr. 4588

Sprintout Berlin 2016
Die Universität St. Gallen, Hochschule für Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozial-
wissenschaften sowie Internationale Beziehungen (HSG), gestattet hiermit die
Drucklegung der vorliegenden Dissertation, ohne damit zu den darin ausge-
sprochenen Anschauungen Stellung zu nehmen.

St. Gallen, den 24. Oktober 2016
Der Rektor:

Prof. Dr. Thomas Bieger

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Für meine Großeltern
Hildegard Steigler, Gerda Schölmerich und Paul Schölmerich

Danksagung
Viele Menschen haben zum erfolgreichen Abschluss dieses Projekts beigetra-
gen. Zunächst möchte ich daher meinen Betreuern Prof. Thomas Beschorner
und Prof. Ludger Heidbrink für ihre Unterstützung, sowie der Friedrich-Ebert-
Stiftung für das großzügige Graduiertenstipendium und die ideelle Unter-
stützung danken.
Des Weiteren danke ich meinen Freunden und meiner Familie für ihre Liebe
und Ermutigung. Besonderer Dank gilt dabei meinen Eltern Bettina und Jürgen
Schölmerich, die mir beigebracht haben, an mich selbst und meine Intuition zu
glauben und mich immer mit offenen Armen empfangen.
Der größte Dank gilt meinem Mann Jan Drebes, der jeden einzelnen meiner
glücklichen Momente mit ganzem Herzen mit mir teilt und mich während der
weniger glücklichen Momente der letzten Jahre begleitet und gehalten hat.
Seine bedingungslose Liebe und ehrliche Freundschaft machen mich zu dem
Menschen, der ich bin. Ich bin stolz und glücklich, dieses Dissertationsprojekt
erfolgreich zum Abschluss gebracht zu haben, aber nichts macht mich stolzer
und glücklicher als das Leben mit Dir, Jasper und Malte.

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List of Abbreviations 6
Summary 7
Zusammenfassung 8
1. Introduction 9
1.1. What is Corporate Social Responsibility? 9
1.2. Why do we need more CSR-research? 15
1.3. Structure of the Dissertation 17
2. Including the ‘Other’: Power and Postcolonialism as
Underrepresented Perspectives in the Discourse on Corporate
Social Responsibility 20
2.1. Introduction 20
2.2. Corporate Social Responsibility 23
2.2.1. Still no Clear Definition 23
2.2.2. Weakness of CSR 24
2.2.3. The Business Management Perspective 25
2.2.4. The Critical-Normative Perspective 27
2.3. Power as Underrepresented Perspective in the Discourse on
Corporate Social Responsibility 28
2.3.1. Power and CSR 30
2.3.1.1. Power and the ‘uneven geographical development’ 32
2.3.1.2. Power and stakeholder differentiation 36
2.3.1.3. Power and freedom of choice 38
2.3.1.4. Power and language 40
2.3.2. Postcolonialism and CSR 42
2.4. Conclusion 45
3. Impediments to the Implementation of Voluntary Codes of
Conduct in Production Factories of the global South: So much
to do, so little done 48
3.1. Introduction 48
3.2. Protecting labor rights in the global economy 49
3.2.1. Reasons for and consequences of production
fragmentation 50
3.2.2. Codes of conduct in global supply chains as prominent
CSR-method 52
3.3. Codes of conduct as exclusive and eurocentric constructs 56
3.4. Why corporations prefer to influence certain labor rights over
others? 61
3.5. Are multistakeholder-initiatives a solution? 65

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3.6. Concluding remarks 67
4. Speaking ‘CSR’ - Reproductions of Eurocentrism and
Exclusiveness in the Discourse on Corporate Social
Responsibility 71
4.1. Introduction 71
4.2. CSR from a postcolonial perspective 73
4.3. Multistakeholder-initiatives as deliberative paradigms? 76
4.4. Language as basis for eurocentrism and exclusiveness in
codes of conduct 82
4.5. DIMEAN as method of choice 86
4.5.1. Selection of corpus of analysis and limits of the
research 89
4.6. Discussion of the results of the analysis 90
4.6.1. Intratextual layer 91
4.6.2. Agent layer 95
4.6.3. Transtextual layer 99
4.7. Concluding remarks 103
5. Conclusion 106
5.1. CSR, power, and postcolonialism:
Conclusions of the first part 106
5.2. CSR, eurocentrism and exclusiveness:
Conclusions of the second part 109
5.3. CSR, language and discourse:
Conclusions of the third part 112
5.4. Limits of the research and final thoughts 114

Bibliography 117
Appendix – Discourse Corpus 137
Fair Wear Foundation 137
Fair Labor Association 141
Business Social Compliance Initiative 142
Better Work Initiative 143
Ethical Trading Initiative 144
Lebenslauf 152

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List of Abbreviations

BSCI Business Social Compliance Initiative
BW Better Work Programme
CR Corporate Responsibility
CSR Corporate Social Responsibility
ETI Ethical Trading Initiative
FLA Fair Labor Association
FWF Fair Wear Foundation
ILO International Labour Organisation
MNC Multinational corporation
MNU Multinationales Unternehmen
MSI Multistakeholder-initiative
NGO Non-governmental organization
UN United Nations
WTO World Trade Organization

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Summary
The dissertation at hand aims at showing how certain theoretical perspectives
have been missing in the discourse on and the implementation of Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR). The first part claims that one of these perspective
angles is ‘power’ with a Foucauldian notion, since it offers a fundamental
explanatory basis for all social interactions such as CSR-measures. It argues
that conducting CSR reinforces rather than challenges corporate power and
MNCs actively create a hierarchical structure by defining what CSR includes
and who is ‘in need’ of their responsible action. This uneven relationship can
be described as a form of normalized inequality, which is formally accepted by
all stakeholders, instead of openly exercised corporate power. The second
important perspective that is lacking is ‘postcolonialism’: It is especially the
voice of the subaltern workers themselves, the actors for whom corporations
take over responsibility, that seems to be missing in the discourse, which can
be explained by its eurocentric character.
The second part continues to elaborate on this and argues that both eurocen-
trism as well as exclusiveness are deeply rooted phenomena in the CSR dis-
course. CSR is constructed around the assumption that there are predetermined
actors who should be responsible for others, and that there are specific univer-
sal values about what responsible behavior towards the stakeholders entails.
The second part discusses how this is linked to the fundamental tension be-
tween the corporate goal of improving so-called outcome standards and civil
society’s priority on improving enabling rights of workers. Workers them-
selves often don’t take part in the development of codes of conduct regulating
labor in their factories under the name of CSR, and thus don’t have a voice
about what changes of labor conditions might be significant for them. The
dissertation also discusses the question if MSIs could be a way out of this ine-
quality, due to their assumingly impartial set-up.
The third part takes up on this debate by elaborating on the hypothetical gap
between the actor conducting CSR and the actor for whom others take respon-
sibility, and the positioning of this subaltern actor in the discourse on CSR. It
uses the DIMEAN-methodology to discursively analyze written documents of
codes of conduct that are developed and implemented by MSIs with the goal to
examine the relationships between CSR-actors and to portray how exclusive-
ness and eurocentrism are linguistically produced and reproduced. Besides a
broad variety of detailed outcomes, the results show that the structural power
inequality in CSR is already rooted in written CSR-documents and its repro-
ductions continuously occur during the process of their implementation in the
supply chains.

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Zusammenfassung
Der erste Teil der vorliegenden Dissertation weist auf fehlende theoretische
Perspektiven im Diskurs um und der Umsetzung von Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) hin. Die Machttheorie nach Foucault’scher Auslegung
wird als eine dieser theoretischen Perspektiven vorgestellt, da sie als funda-
mentale Erklärungsgrundlage für soziale Interaktionen wie CSR-Maßnahmen
dienen kann. Es wird argumentiert, dass CSR unternehmerische Macht eher
stärkt anstatt sie herauszufordern, und dass MNU zu einer hierarchischen
Struktur der globalen Wirtschaft beitragen, indem sie definieren was CSR
beinhaltet und wer diese unternehmerische Verantwortung eigentlich ‘braucht’.
Anstatt offen ausgeübter Macht kann man diese hierarchische Struktur als
‘normalisierte Ungleichheit’ bezeichnen, die formal von allen beteiligten Akt-
euren akzeptiert wird. Der Postkolonialismus ist die zweite theoretische Per-
spektive die im ersten Dissertationsteil vorgestellt wird, da weiterhin insbeson-
dere die Stimmen der subalternen Arbeiter im CSR-Diskurs fehlen, was – so
das Argument – unter anderem im eurozentrischen Charakter des Diskurses
begründet ist.
Der zweite Teil der Dissertation weitet dies aus und argumentiert sowohl, dass
Eurozentrismus als auch Exklusivität tief verwurzelte Phänomene im CSR-
Diskurs sind. CSR ist um die Annahme herum konstruiert, dass es bestimmte
Akteure gibt, die für andere Akteure verantwortlich sind, und dass es gleich-
zeitig universelle Werte gibt, nach denen sich dieses verantwortliche Verhalten
richtet. Der zweite Teil geht zudem darauf ein, wie dies mit der Grundspan-
nung zwischen den unterschiedlichen Prioritäten von Unternehmen und Zivil-
gesellschaft in Bezug auf Verhaltenskodizes (als prominente CSR-Maßnahme)
zusammenhängt (Verbesserung von ‘Outcome Standards’ versus ‘Enabling
Rights’). Die Arbeiter selbst sind meist nicht an deren Entwicklung beteiligt,
und können ihre eigenen Prioritäten daher nicht selbst äußern. Die Dissertation
diskutiert daher, ob MSIs aufgrund ihrer größeren Partizipationsmöglichkeiten
eine umfassende Lösung für diese Ungleichheit sein könnten.
Der dritte Teil knüpft daran an und diskutiert die weite hypothetische Kluft
zwischen jenen Akteuren, die CSR durchführen, und solchen, für die Verant-
wortung übernommen wird, und wo letztere im CSR-Diskurs überhaupt positi-
oniert sind. Anhand der DIMEAN-Methodik werden CSR-Dokumente von
MSIs diskursiv analysiert, um die Beziehungen zwischen den Akteuren darzu-
stellen. So wird untersucht, inwiefern Eurozentrismus und Exklusivität schon
hier linguistisch hergestellt und reproduziert werden. Neben einer Vielzahl
detaillierter Ergebnisse zeigt die Analyse, dass die strukturelle Machtungleich-
heit des CSR-Diskurses bereits in den schriftlichen Dokumenten ihren Ur-
sprung findet und von hier aus im weiteren Prozess der Implementierung ver-
stärkt wird.

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1. Introduction
The postcolonial perspective does not offer a single, better alternative to
existing management theories steeped in the colonial worldview. Raising
the subaltern voice does not imply that it represents an alternative truth
to that represented hegemonic culture. However, it does encourage a
multiplicity of voices and possibilities, which might challenge the as-
sumptions upon which our perspective of the world is built. (Frenkel and
Shenhav, 2006: 872)
On what moral basis do multinational corporations, mostly based in the West-
ern world, take responsibility for stakeholders in their supply chains? Besides
potential financial benefit, what drives companies to do this, and what does
this say about the state of our global economy? Moreover, what does this do
with the people for whom companies take responsibility and why can’t they
take over responsibility for themselves? These questions have deeply puzzled
me for a long time, and with this PhD-project, I plan to shed more light on
these issues in order to find answers.
1.1. What is Corporate Social Responsibility?
The social responsibility of the firm (Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR)
has been discussed for decades. In the beginning, the focus lay on the specifi-
cation of the phenomenon and the definition of various types of it (cf. Kolk,
2015; Carroll, 1999; Mintzberg, 1983). Scholars have discussed whether the
implementation of CSR-measures leads to financial benefits for the corpora-
tion. Supporters of this idea saw CSR as a competitive advantage and dis-
cussed it as business case (cf. Porter, 1985; Porter and Kramer, 2002; see
summaries in Zadek, 2004; Vogel, 2005; Hamann, 2007; Lev et al., 2010;
Carroll and Shabana, 2010; Russell and Russell, 2010; Schreck, 2011 and
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many others). Other scholars have broadly argued about the social impact of
CSR-measures (see summaries in Blowfield, 2005: 523; Prieto-Carrón et al.,
2006: 986; Nelson, 2006; Blowfield, 2007; Werhane et al., 2010 and many
others), and what political role CSR plays as a substitute for government regu-
lation in cases in which the state cannot fully fulfill its role anymore due to
globalization shifts (cf. Scherer and Palazzo, 2007). Some scholars in this area
have occupied themselves with the institutional differences between different
national contexts and what effect these differences have on the implementation
of CSR (see for example Gjølberg, 2009). Some more critical scholars even
extended this and argue that it is ‘important to bring into the discussion the
realities of political-economic dominance in the world economy’ (Mehdi and
Morgan, 2014: 98), since these national contexts ‘are in practice entwined and
located in a hierarchical system of nations’ (Mehdi and Morgan, 2014: 98).
The attractiveness that the topic has gained as a field of research did not cease
up to today, but it also did not lead to a clearer understanding of what the term
“Corporate Social Responsibility” essentially stands for. The consequence is
that it is often used as an overall term for anything a company does that bene-
fits someone else than the classical shareholder or consumer (especially by
practitioners).
The basis of the necessity for CSR is that corporations (can) have adverse and
negative effects on stakeholders other than shareholders or consumers which
can be drawn to the requirement of making as much profit as possible, alt-
hough – as Ahen and Zettinig argue – ‘profit making per se is not unethical.
Attaining such objectives at the expense of stakeholders or in ways that makes
society worse-off (…) constitutes corporate irresponsibility’ (Ahen and Zetti-
nig, 2015: 104). Corporate Social Responsibility is therefore needed in order to
avert these effects and to limit further negative impact on non-shareholder
stakeholders, so the idea. As Prakash simply puts it, ‘CSR invariably entails
that corporations devote a proportion of their rents to stakeholders other than

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