Rethinking Corporate Social Responsibility as a Product-Harm Crisis: Explaining the Recent Shift in Terminology from CSR to Sustainability

Since the mid-1920s, scholars and researchers have examined the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which addresses the interaction between business and society. Interest in CSR within the fields of marketing and corporate communication grew significantly after the 1970s, and by the early 2000s, it had become a primary focus of marketing research (Carrigan and Attalla, Journal of Consumer Marketing 18:560–578, 2001). Over the past two decades, a CSR-related concept has begun to emerge within corporate communication: Sustainability. Although its origins can be traced back to the twentieth century, it is only in recent decades, particularly the last 10 years, that the sustainability-related narrative has become majorly significant in shaping the fields of management and business ethics. Despite some overlap between sustainability and CSR concepts, the term "sustainability" has gained increasing prominence in the business sector and public discourse over the past 10 years. While the term "CSR" remains an established and accepted concept in management education and studies, its usage by companies has been declining, with only a few companies today mentioning CSR in their social and environmental reports (known currently as sustainability reports). A few references in management literature mention the shift in corporate communication practice from the concept of CSR to that of sustainability. However, there is currently no theoretical explanation that clarifies why this transition has occurred and why it is important. Therefore, following an analogy-based, theory-building approach, this chapter examines this linguistic transition from CSR to sustainability in corporate communication to provide a theoretical interpretation to this linguistic transition. Our objective is to interpret the reasons behind this shift in the business world and to emphasize the importance of using sustainability-related terminology in academia, which has not yet fully occurred. To develop our analogy, we follow (Cornelissen, Academy of Management Review 30:751–764, 2005) three-phase process of analogical reasoning. In Phase 1, we establish the fundamental correspondence between two relevant domains, drawing parallels between the product-harm crisis from marketing literature and CSR, here conceived as a product. In Phase 2, essential characteristics are transferred from the first domain of the analogy (product-harm crisis) to the second one (CSR). Phase 3 leads to the identification of a new concept: the CSR-harm crisis. This new concept clarifies the inadequacies and potential dangers of persisting with traditional CSR terminology in corporate communication, which may have detrimental implications for both corporations and society at large. This chapter urges scholars in the field to accept the new lexicon to reflect the evolving landscape of the relationship between business and society. The term "corporate sustainability," or "sustainability," could indeed broaden the scope of CSR by integrating financial, environmental, and social concerns into the vision of the purpose of a company. The concept is in line with theories which suggest broadening the perspective of organizations' purpose, responsibility and scope (e.g. Crane et al. 2008; Crane et al., California Management Review 56:130–153, 2014; Scherer and Palazzo, Academy of Management Review 32:1096–1120, 2007;Scherer and Palazzo, Journal of Management Studies 48:899–931, 2011;; Sheehy, J of Bus Ethics 131:625–648, 2015; Wood, International Journal of Management Reviews 12:50–84, 2010), which would require companies to accept their social and environmental responsibilities above any other consideration (Garriga and Melé, J of Bus Ethics 53:51–71, 2004).