Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is widely viewed as an important feature of contemporary business. It is characterized by the notion that organizations ought to voluntarily recognize and, where possible, practically mitigate the social impacts of its business activities, and that doing so allows organizations to meet the expectations of affected stakeholders. However, CSR initiatives are almost universally tethered to the idea that corporations exist to serve their own performance objectives, and that these will ultimately take precedence over wider macro-social considerations. The present paper proposes that this conception of CSR mirrors the underlying neurological tension between the domains of analytic reasoning and empathic or socioemotional reasoning, and the neural correlates of each. Using the opposing domains hypothesis, it is proposed that CSR, as it is currently conceived of and practiced, is antithetical to social and ethical reasoning at the level of the brain, can increase the scope for dehumanization, and demands calling the ethical dimensions of CSR into question.