Corporate social responsibility: An old wine in a new gourd

Peter Sena Gawu,

Husein Inusah

Published: March 31, 2018

A corporation’s moral obligation is said to be sustained by two viewpoints: the narrow and broad views. The narrow view restrains a corporation’s moral obligation to the corporation’s owners and shareholders while the broad view, which is often deployed to support Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives, extends the corporation’s moral obligation towards others beyond the confines of the corporation walls to include all stakeholders, and the environment in which the corporation operates and so on. We argue from an ethical perspective that this dichotomy is a facade. We conclude that the broad view is indeed a narrow view in disguise.