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Linking Economic and Social-Exchange Games: From the Community Norm to CSR

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Social Capital, Corporate Social Responsibility, Economic Behaviour and Performance

Abstract

Why are corporations engaged in various non-economic activities to meet societal demands (such as environmental protection) beyond their legal obligations? In other words, why do corporations ‘over-comply’ (Heal 2005) with the social demands? Does it benefit corporations (their stockholders)? If so, how? Common-sense-wise an answer may appear obvious. However, it may not necessarily be so for the prevailing framework of economists’ thinking: ‘corporations do not need to do anything beyond legal obligations in order to serve stockholders interests’. The object of this chapter is to suggest an analytical framework to challenge such orthodox views without abandoning the premise of a bounded-rationality of agents concerned (various stakeholders of corporations as well as the citizens of the society). An essential idea is to endogenize the relevance of such social constructs as (individual) social capital, norms, status ascriptions and the like to economic behaviors within an expanded framework of game-theoretic thinking.

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Authors
  1. Masahiko Aoki
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics of Trento University, Italy

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

  2. Inter-University Centre of Research, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy

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

  3. Department of Sociology and Social Research of the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy

    Giacomo Degli Antoni (Assistant Professor of Economics and Research Fellow) (Assistant Professor of Economics and Research Fellow)

  4. EconomEtica, Italy

    Giacomo Degli Antoni (Assistant Professor of Economics and Research Fellow) (Assistant Professor of Economics and Research Fellow)

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© 2011 Masahiko Aoki

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Aoki, M. (2011). Linking Economic and Social-Exchange Games: From the Community Norm to CSR. In: Sacconi, L., Antoni, G.D. (eds) Social Capital, Corporate Social Responsibility, Economic Behaviour and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306189_6

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