Corporate and Stakeholder Responsibility: Making Business Ethics A Two-Way Conversation

The globalization of society erodes established ideas about the division of labor between the political and economic spheres and calls for a fresh view concerning the role of business in society. Some multinational corporations have started to change their role from one of simply following the rules to one of creating the rules of the economic game. They already have assumed responsibilities that once were regarded as belonging to government. They engage in the production of public goods (e.g., public health, education), and in self-regulation to fill global gaps in legal regulation and to promote societal peace and stability. Some corporations do not simply comply with societal standards in legal and moral terms; they engage in discursive social and political processes that aim at setting or redefining those standards in a changing, globalizing world. Those activities go beyond the mainstream understanding of stakeholder responsibility and corporate social responsibility.