Corporate Social Responsibility?: Human Rights in the New Global Economy

With this book, Charlotte Walker-Said and John D. Kelly have assembled an essential toolkit to better understand how the notoriously ambiguous concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) functions in practice within different disciplines and settings. Bringing together cutting-edge scholarship from leading figures in human rights programs around the United States, they vigorously engage some of the major political questions of our age: what is CSR, and how might it render positive political change in the real world?

The book examines the diverse approaches to CSR, with a particular focus on how those approaches are siloed within discrete disciplines such as business, law, the social sciences, and human rights. Bridging these disciplines and addressing and critiquing all the conceptual domains of CSR, the book also explores how CSR silos develop as a function of the competition between different interests. Ultimately, the contributors show that CSR actions across all arenas of power are interdependent, continually in dialogue, and mutually constituted. Organizing a diverse range of viewpoints, this book offers a much-needed synthesis of a crucial element of today’s globalized world and asks how businesses can, through their actions, make it better for everyone.