Corporate social irresponsibility, hostile organisations and global resource extraction
Deanna Kemp, John R. Owen
Abstract
Abstract Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a fundamentally normative construction. It speaks to what social responsibility should look like, who it should apply to, and how it should be demonstrated. By contrast, the analytic position of the corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) discourse is evidence‐based, and objects to the notion that companies can claim to be responsible while at the same time act irresponsibly. This paper supports a clear separation between (i) the critique of company performance within the dominant discursive construct of CSR and (ii) CSI as an evidence‐based approach to reading and documenting corporate performance. A conceptually distinct CSI discourse removes the need for researchers to disprove CSR rhetoric before engaging with responsibility problems. Rather than organising studies around CSR claims and commitments, we suggest that researchers of global resource extraction put their energies towards capturing the form and function of ‘organised irresponsibility’ in locations where mining takes place.