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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
Business Ethics: A European ReviewVolume 17 Number 1 January 2008
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.
Business Ethics: A European ReviewVolume 17 Number 1 January 2008
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
Business Ethics: A European ReviewVolume 17 Number 1 January 2008
r 2008 The AuthorsJournal compilation r 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 77
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 Ethics: A European ReviewVolume 17 Number 1 January 2008
78r 2008 The Authors
Journal compilation r 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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
Business Ethics: A European ReviewVolume 17 Number 1 January 2008
r 2008 The AuthorsJournal compilation r 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 79
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
Business Ethics: A European ReviewVolume 17 Number 1 January 2008
80r 2008 The Authors
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
Business Ethics: A European ReviewVolume 17 Number 1 January 2008
r 2008 The AuthorsJournal compilation r 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 85
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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