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Can corporate social responsibility help us understand the credit crisis?

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  • Argandoña, Antonio

    (IESE Business School)

Abstract

The financial crisis which started in the United States in 2007 and which has spread throughout the world has many causes, one of which is the abundance of unethical behavior on the part of many of those who made the financial decisions, such as regulators, supervisors, managers and employees, and also on the part of a not insignificant number of their customers. In this paper, we will seek to shed light on the crisis's ethical content and show how the generalized practice of corporate social responsibility within financial institutions could have helped reduce the magnitude of the crisis, perhaps not systemically but definitely in some of the organizations that have been most affected by the crisis. For this to happen, however, a particular concept of social responsibility would have to have been applied, a responsibility with an ethical basis - or, more specifically, a voluntarily assumed ethics that was capable of giving rise to self-generated duties among financial decision-makers.

Suggested Citation

  • Argandoña, Antonio, 2009. "Can corporate social responsibility help us understand the credit crisis?," IESE Research Papers D/790, IESE Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebg:iesewp:d-0790
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    File URL: http://www.iese.edu/research/pdfs/DI-0790-E.pdf
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    Cited by:

    1. Antonio Argandoña & Heidi Hoivik, 2009. "Corporate Social Responsibility: One Size Does Not Fit All. Collecting Evidence from Europe," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 89(3), pages 221-234, November.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Crisis; Ethics; Finance; Corporate Social Responsibility; Financial system;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • M21 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics - - - Business Economics

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