Corporate Social Responsibility and Culture

Abstract

In this chapter, the aim is to underline important issues and consequences when considering the concept of social responsibility for a business. Most of the questions and issues involving corporate social responsibility are complex problems that include dilemmas with contradictory aspects. Thus, corporate social responsibility requires deep changes in the way of doing business in order to integrate an ethical and socially responsible dimension at the level of management and employees and at all levels of responsibilities whether internal or external. It requires a change of culture. Culture provides the distinctive edge (Goldman and Rojot, Negotiation. Kluwer Law International, 2003).When talking about culture, we talk of at least three levels: national, occupational and organizational. The focus here is specifically on the level of the organization, often the enterprise. There are several problems such as cultural differences, cultural changes over time and others which are mainly related to the concept of culture. One way of handling these multiple problems would be to adopt a different view of culture, considering it as shared limitations on rationality (Rojot, The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Decision Making. Oxford University Press, 2008; Chanut and Rojot, Comportement organisationnel. Tome III De Boek, 2009).