If CSR is culturally determined, what can we say about ethical organisations?

Abstract

The paper explores how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is impacted by values. The link between society and what is viewed as socially responsible, what is viewed as ethical business conduct, has been widely studied. Some have considered whether an organisation that has values consistent or congruent with those of the society in which it operates is an ethical organisation. Two features of the contemporary world make this more telling: there is a considerable diversity of values within many nation-states and many organisations are being held to account in one nation state for actions in another. This is considered as to whether the notion of an ethical organisation must be tied to a hegemonic notion of ethics. Implications for teaching ethics in business schools are drawn in the context of recent discussion on the role of business schools and concern about the pervasiveness of quantitative approaches.