Connecting political csr and the organization

In the growing amount of literature on political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) emanating from Scherer and Palazzo (2007, 2011) it is seldom discussed what sort of organization is required to satisfy the theory of PCSR. Part of the literature on PCSR does raise this question, e.g. by pointing out ‘symbolism’ in organizational theory as fit to PCSR (Heugens & Scherer 2010), criticizing the implicit neo-institutional premise (Banerjee 2010), arguing for decision procedures of corporate moral agency (Dubbink & Smith 2011), questioning corporate accountability (Hussain & Moriarty 2016) or revising the theory of the firm (Scherer, Palazzo, and Baumann 2006). Scherer and Palazzo have themselves suggested several features of PCSR delineating the role of the business organization in society; that it contributes to enacting regulation (rule-making) of soft law, that it provides public goods and that it has an ability, given the right circumstances, to be a democratic agent participating in and promoting (deliberative) democracy in society (Scherer & Palazzo 2007, 2011; Scherer, Palazzo and Baumann 2006; Scherer, Rasche, Palazzo & Spicer 2016; Scherer 2017). In this paper, I seek to dig deeper in the search for organizational foundations of PCSR to unravel what sort of organization satisfies criteria of PCSR such as a) democratic pluralism of governance, b) ability to maneuver in the void between public and private institutions, and c) being accountable to relevant stakeholders defined and selected by a social connection model understanding of responsibility. All these features are ruled by norms of deliberative democracy, so the understanding (and theory) of the organization should also be ‘prescriptive’ of how organizations ought to act to satisfy PCSR – a purely descriptive and empirical account will not suffice (Scherer 2017). 2 Two accounts of the organization that could satisfy PCSR are discussed: the organization as a corporate citizen, and the organization a system integrated into society as a (potentially) democratic system. It is argued that PCSR is not compatible with the organization conceived as a corporate citizen due to its preference for non-metaphysical foundations (the priority of democracy to philosophy) as well as its commitment to CSR as a process of deliberation (Scherer & Palazzo 2007). Hence, a non-metaphysical, proceduralist and pragmatist view the organization as a system is suggested (Sabadoz & Singer 2017; Dempsey 2013) to provide the best fit with PCSR. Finally, the paper argues that given the systemic (institutional) embeddedness of the organization according to PCSR, the democratic functionality of the wider social and economic system must be taken into consideration as well – since assuming the corporation could be as democratic as PCSR suggests, it will be insufficient if the wider systemic context does not provide conditions for deliberative democracy. Keywords: Political CSR, organization, deliberative democracy, justification, institutions, system