Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been recently conceptualized and studied as a political phenomenon. Most debates in this scholarship have thus far focused on normative issues. Less attention has been paid to the explanatory potential of CSR research grounded in political theory and philosophy. In this article, we conduct a pragmatist reading of political scholarship on CSR and seek to deploy existing knowledge for research pursuing political explanation. We argue that the political ontologies that underlie scholarship on CSR can be (...) used to transform normative and descriptive research also for explanatory uses. We show how ontologies vary in terms of potential research objects and scopes of political explanation, and argue that the main types of political-ontological stances adopted in scholarship on CSR, foundational and post-foundational stances, offer explanatory analysis of different schematic guidelines. Our pragmatist reading of previous research and an empirical case illustration of political explanation of change in corporate responsibility in the biofuel industry demonstrate the opportunities, limitations, and challenges different political-ontological commitments provide for political explanation. (shrink)

The role of governments in business and society research has remained underexplored, and recent studies have called for further investigations of mechanisms of government intervention. In response to this call, this article studies how nation branding communication can govern businesses toward sustainability by providing qualifications for sustainable business, legitimizing these qualifications, and attaching national aspirations to business conduct that meets these qualifications. A comparative exploratory analysis of the nation branding materials of Denmark and Finland shows that while the two nations (...) qualify business sustainability in similar ways, differences exist in the legitimization of business sustainability and the national aspirations attached to sustainable business conduct. Both countries emphasize principles of efficiency and renewability in their sustainability qualifications. However, while Finland clearly seeks to attract firms to the local business environment to increase exports and improve the local economy, Denmark ascribes more heterogeneous value to sustainable business. (shrink)

There has been little theoretical debate of why companies behave in socially responsible ways whilst descriptive analysis of corporate social responsibility is flourishing. As result, there have been few methodological debates on how to study both what responsible actions are and why companies act accordingly. This methodological and theoretical essay discusses how institutional social theory has been and could be used in explaining socially responsible corporate behaviour. It is explored what kinds of theoretical tools are needed in explaining this behaviour (...) and how various tools can be integrated into one model explaining socially responsible corporate actions. It is argued that researchers should empirically focus simultaneously on normative origins and institutional environments of responsibilities, on power relations determining the particular responsibilities, and on institutional arrangement of corporate actions. (shrink)