The Social Construction of CSR’s Identity in Management Consulting

This chapter examines the penetration of management consulting firms into the growing market of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR has come to represent one of the biggest business trends but also fiercest contested arenas of consulting activity. This trend is following the greater recognition of the social impact and responsibility corporations exercise towards people and the environment (Banerjee, 2001; Mackey et al., 2007). Consultants enter into CSR in order to help clients address social and ethical challenges/dilemmas/concerns (Windell, 2009). However, such entry creates new questions about the underlying methods and practices by which such market penetration happens. Exploring the social construction of CSR remains a useful metaphor for understanding the processes by which it is penetrating a targeted audience. This chapter argues that the social construction can be seen as an occurring process within three separate but also interrelated social domains. The first domain comprises the consultants’ association with the existing public discourse on CSR. Its popularity and growing prominence is founded on the grand proposition that organizations remain socially responsible for their actions and their consequences (McWilliams and Siegel, 2001). In this domain consultants seek to become supporters of CSR ideology by focusing attention on the negative implications for companies not adhering to a CSR philosophy.