The Elephant in the Room: The Nascent Research Agenda on Corporations, Social Responsibility, and Capitalism

The role of business in society has attracted considerable research interest over the past decades. Next to themes such as sustainability, social entrepreneurship, multistakeholder initiatives, and business ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a prominent domain in it its own right within management and organizational research. It is our intention in this special themed section to kick start the reconsideration of the socio-economic context of CSR’s starting place, broadly speaking capitalism, and to develop a more nuanced understanding of CSR in the contemporary neoliberal political economy.

Published as: De Bakker, F.G.A., Matten, D., Spence, L., & Wickert. C. (2020). The elephant in the room: The nascent research agenda on corporations, social responsibility, and capitalism. Business & Society, 59(7), 1295–1302.