SOSC 3040 Corporate Social Responsibility Assignment # 1

Topic: Debating CSR: the Merck Mectizan donation program

A major theme of this course is the debate over the meaning and desirability of CSR. We have examined several positions in this debate, including:

– normative stakeholder theories (e.g.Donaldson & Preston, Donaldson and Walsh, Stone, Stout, Wood, Williams, Davis), who support a broad notion of CSR

– instrumental (strategic) stakeholder theories (e.g. Drucker, Stone)

– normative stockholder theories (e.g. Sternberg,Henderson, Hasnas,Jensen) who support only a narrow notion of CSR

– some of these stockholder theorists (e.g. Sternberg,Henderson) are right-wing critics ofbroad CSR, while others (e.g. Jensen) are right-wing critics of normative stakeholder based broad CSR but supporters of instrumental broad CSR.

– market-failure CSR theories (e.g. Heath) which support some aspects of broad CSR but not stakeholder theory per se

– left-wing critics of CSR (e.g. Corporate Watch, Bakan), who strongly disagree with normative stockholder theory but might agree that descriptive and legal stockholder theory are accurate regarding current business practice and law.