Corporate Governance perspectives and CSR: Issues for Stakeholder Management

Whereas many papers have attempted to link corporate governance, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and stakeholder relationships, few of them have managed to clearly define these concepts and the nature of their relationships. In this paper, we describe different views or perspectives of corporate governance leading to specific social responsibilities for companies and to specific ways to manage corporate stakeholders: the shareholder governance, the strategic stakeholder governance and the citizenship stakeholder governance. All these views or perspectives represent ideal-types but are not mutually exclusive as they represent specific combinations of economic and social objectives over time for companies, without excluding possibilities of hybridization. In this regard, our paper presents the detailed assumptions and combinations of choices behind different perspectives of governance and their links with CSR and implications for stakeholder relationships. We also extend our contribution by proposing a theoretical model useful to understand the contingencies or dynamics that can cause hybridization or shift between the different views or perspectives over time.