Corporate Social Irresponsibility: A Critique of American Businesses’ Vacillating Stakeholder Strategies in Reaction to Public Opinion

Abstract

Most Western corporations today subscribe to some form of stakeholder theory, which assumes that businesses have communal obligations extending beyond the maximization of shareholder profits. Companies adopt Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs to address the concerns of employees, communities, and other parties deemed to have legitimate interests in corporate means and outcomes. In this project, I claim that stakeholder thinking theoretically comports with Christian understandings of communal responsibilities and the common good, but, in practice, CSR strategies are unduly influenced by public opinion that supplants transcendent ethical principles. To test this claim, I examine changes in CSR behaviors before and after the racially charged events that took place in the United States in 2020, including the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests. Specifically, I analyze trends in companies’ shareholder-focused discussions on the topics of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and racial justice. My analysis reveals a demonstrable increase in both measures immediately following the events of 2020 and a decrease in later years when public outrage began to subside and DEI became a more polarizing social issue. I argue that CSR programs better grounded in corporate virtues and organizational telos in the context of contribution to the common good would have been more consistent and less reactive to vacillating public sentiment.