The paradoxes of CSR instrumentation: making CSR a lever for organizational learning

CSR instrumentation, in particular extra-financial reporting, has experienced considerable growth in recent years. While it reflects the growing institutionalization of CSR, the proliferation of CSR tools raises questions, even controversies, about their design and logic of use. However, academic research on CSR has so far paid little attention to thinking in terms of managerial instruments. This chapter aims to analyze the conditions for an efficient use and appropriation of CSR instruments. After recalling the role of managerial tools in organizational dynamics, the chapter highlights some paradoxes that CSR instrumentation cristallyses: its interpretative flexibility, its claim to univeralism and to embrace the expectations of all stakeholders, the instrumental promise it conveys which is based on quantification of quality, the implicit view of an alignement of stakeholders' interests, which obscures politics. The discussion suggests some avenues that might help address theses paradoxes. It calls for a more open conception, or even a co-construction of CSR instrumentation that makes it not only a vector for constraigning behaviors but also a lever for organizational learning.