Prevailing rationales in the corporate social responsibility debate

The literature on corporate responsibility contains a wide range of arguments for business sector involvement in matters of social and political community. Some writers argue for extensive involvement, while others draw relatively narrow boundaries around the appropriate sphere of a company's nonbusiness activity. One way to classify and clarify these various views is to examine each in light of the notion of business-society relationship which underlies it. Four ways of understanding the business-society relationship are articulated here, together with the arguments for corporate responsibility that emerge from them.