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A Rawlsian View of CSR and the Game Theory of its Implementation (Part I): the Multi-stakeholder Model of Corporate Governance

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Book cover Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance

Part of the book series: International Economic Association Series ((IEA))

Abstract

This is the first part of a comprehensive essay on the Rawlsian view of corporate social responsibility (in short, CSR). CSR is defined as a multi-stakeholder model of corporate governance and objective function based on the extension of fiduciary duties towards all of the firm’s stakeholders (see section 2). A rationale for this idea is given firstly within the perspective of new institutional economic theory in terms of transaction costs efficiency. From this perspective, abuse of authority in regard to the non-controlling stakeholders emerges as the main unsolved problem, and makes it impossible to sever efficiency from equity within the domain of corporate governance (section 3). Intuitively, a Rawlsian principle of redress emerges as the natural answer to the legitimization problem of ownership and control rights allocations when, in order to provide incentives to one party (the incentive to undertake important specific investments), they give it a disproportionate advantage over other non-controlling stakeholders.

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Authors
  1. Lorenzo Sacconi
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Trento, Italy

    Lorenzo Sacconi (Professor of Economics and Unicredit Chair in Economic Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility, director of EconomEtica) (Professor of Economics and Unicredit Chair in Economic Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility, director of EconomEtica)

  2. Inter-university Research Center, University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy

    Lorenzo Sacconi (Professor of Economics and Unicredit Chair in Economic Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility, director of EconomEtica) (Professor of Economics and Unicredit Chair in Economic Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility, director of EconomEtica)

  3. Vanderbilt University Law School, USA

    Margaret Blair (Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise) (Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise)

  4. Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, USA

    R. Edward Freeman (University Professor and Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration, Academic director of Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics, and a senior fellow of Olsson Center for Applied Ethics) (University Professor and Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration, Academic director of Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics, and a senior fellow of Olsson Center for Applied Ethics)

  5. Department of Economic Policy, Finance and Development, University of Siena, Italy

    Alessandro Vercelli (Professor of Economics) (Professor of Economics)

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© 2011 International Economic Association

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Sacconi, L. (2011). A Rawlsian View of CSR and the Game Theory of its Implementation (Part I): the Multi-stakeholder Model of Corporate Governance. In: Sacconi, L., Blair, M., Freeman, R.E., Vercelli, A. (eds) Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance. International Economic Association Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230302112_7

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