Rethinking corporate social responsibility under contemporary capitalism: Five ways to reinvent CSR

Skepticism toward CSR is increasing. Management research on CSR tends to focus on positive outcomes from the practice of CSR, such as enhanced financial performance and best practice business cases. Less attention is devoted to why CSR is under siege. This paper argues that CSR is intimately connected with the way that capitalism is practiced, and that poor CSR outcomes are often the result of five “shortcomings” of contemporary capitalism: runaway self-interest, quarterly focus, elite orientation, volume orientation, and one-pattern capitalism. To evidence this, I employ a two-stage approach: a “diagnostic” stage that investigates current challenges facing capitalism and how they affect CSR, and a “clinical” stage that identifies potential solutions based on a qualitative data set collected in Asian business contexts. The proposed solutions suggest ways that researchers, practitioners, and policymakers can conceptualize, design, and implement CSR programs that better fulfill CSR’s promise to business and society. Based on these results, I conclude with ideas on how CSR research can be strengthened by exploring the under-researched linkages among CSR, modern capitalism, and global institutional contexts.