This essay is intended primarily as a theoretical reflection on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and has three main objectives. Firstly, to discuss the production of CSR discourses from a critical perspective, seeing these discourses as a locus of political struggle where, under the name of an apparently common cause, conflicting forces and actors may actually fight for very different or even opposing goals. Secondly, to analyze the current state of CSR education and research in Brazil by identifying the main approaches adopted by practitioners in the field, as well as their most common references and methods, in order to verify how challenging or validating of the status quo these practices are. Finally, in order to illustrate the kind of systemic approach that appears to be generally absent from CSR teaching and research, the essay discusses three structural and structuring characteristics of advanced capitalist societies: their strong tendency towards hyper-rationalization, which routinizes and dehumanizes everything; the proliferation of relatively closed micro-communities of communication and action; and the intensification of individualism and social rootlessness. It is argued that these contemporary phenomena - alongside many similar ones - inevitably end up having a strong influence on the concrete possibilities or eventual outcomes regarding any so-called corporate social responsibility.
corporate social responsibility; management education and research; critical perspectives