Uncovering the Myth of the Rational Good: Diversity Management and Corporate Social Responsibility in Austria

Diversity management (DM) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are widely seen as management concepts that consider social mores and moral stances. At the same time, both are perceived as economically valuable, as they potentially enhance a firm’s efficiency and profitability. Both arguments—moral and economic—capture distinct motives for organizations to implement DM and CSR. We shed light on the heavily debated but still diffuse relationship between those motives. In doing so, we empirically illustrate that Austrian best practice organizations in DM and CSR claim to integrate moral and economic motives. Building on these findings, we propose to conceptually distinguish between moral and instrumental motives to better grasp their respective significance. We then argue that, though the integration of both sounds promising, it embodies a logically impossible stance: Organizations may incorporate particular practices because they either hold them as morally valuable ends in themselves or as useful means to increase performance. The integration of the two arguments (“doing well by doing good”) actually crowds out the essence of the moral argument. This does not mean that morally motivated action cannot lead to success, simply that the pursuit of success is incompatible with moral motivation. Perfunctory reference to the compatibility between moral and economic motivation to implement DM and CSR may therefore indicate organizations’ reluctance to admit their actual preference for instrumental motives. In this case, moral reasons might be being evoked merely to comply with social pressures—a clearly instrumental motive.