The Responsible Business: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Recession

Abstract

The 2008 financial crisis and recession crippled some of the largest businesses in the world and caused severe recession across the world. However, prior to the focus on economic recovery, social responsibility and sustainability were major themes in the business world and debate centred on the role of business in society. The key question and area for research was how the financial crisis affected this debate. This thesis uses the financial crisis to explore the role and responsibilities of business. This research is located firmly within the literature on business and society, where the key debates centre on the role of business and the scope of business responsibilities. The literature on social responsibility has a notable gap in the fact that it does not address the impact of economic context on social responsibilities. The methodology of this paper uses a set of twenty-one interviews. These interviews consisted of three sets of seven interviews with different participant groups for each set. The participant groups consisted of consumers, policy managers and business managers. These interviews were analysed for themes through the data analysis method of coding. The findings of this paper suggest that the role of business in society should be focused on the generation of profit and that the recession or other economic influences do not change this role. These findings also suggest that although businesses are responsible only for complying with the law, they should also satisfy their customers, engage in activities beneficial to their long term interest and avoid actions which cause harm to others or undermine the long term viability of the business. The findings also imply that neither economic context nor profit, changes these responsibilities. These findings make important theoretical and practical contributions. The theoretical contributions support the literature arguing for a limited scope on the role of business. They also argue in favour of social responsibilities being voluntary. The finding that economic context and profitability have no impact on responsibility is important in its own right, but also suggests that business responsibilities are static. This paper makes another contribution through models which are based on the findings. These models combine social responsibility with corporate strategy to show the concept of a responsible business and the difference between voluntary, compulsory and strategic responsibilities.