OCAD University Open Research Repository

Challenging Contemporary Paradigms of Corporate Social Responsibility: Reimagining how business can facilitate flourishing futures

Daniel, Tamara (2020) Challenging Contemporary Paradigms of Corporate Social Responsibility: Reimagining how business can facilitate flourishing futures. [MRP]

Item Type: MRP
Creators: Daniel, Tamara
Abstract:

As our society continues to reckon with the environmental degradation and social inequality that has grown from oppressive structures and systems, corporations have been called upon to harness their power and resources to build towards more promising futures. Throughout history, and due to a variety of motivations, corporations have been harnessing various iterations of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to correct their harmful behaviour and more fulsomely consider their impacts on people and the planet. Despite these processes, however, we are still staring down the barrel of a variety of injustices, many of which corporations have helped propagate. This research explores the evolution of CSR, and the growing body of literature around these practices overtime. Sohail Inayatullah’s Causal Layered Analysis is used as a framework to deconstruct the current practices of corporate social responsibiltiy from their visible iterations, through to the underlying systems, mindsets, and myths that shape it to better understand why CSR has yet to meaningfully address the complex problems of our time. This analysis then provides a launching point from which to identify some of the emerging business-related movements that have the potential to reimagine the future of responsible business practices. These movements are contextualized within Donella Meadow’s Places to Intervene in a System and the Triangle of Choice of the Three Horizons Framework, developed by Baghai, Coley, and White and popularized by Curry and Hodgson. The research closes with a discussion about how these movements have the potential to influence the items uncovered in the CLA and how they may point us into new directions for how corporations can support a move towards a preferred future of flourishing for people and the planet.

Date: 25 August 2020
Uncontrolled Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Capitalism; Equity; Foresight; Systems Thinking
Divisions: Graduate Studies > Strategic Foresight and Innovation
Date Deposited: 02 Sep 2020 05:36
Last Modified: 20 Dec 2021 21:00
URI: https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/3112

Actions (login required)

Edit View Edit View