Corporate Social Responsibility and Economic Responsiveness in India

Since the early 2000s, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has rapidly gained significance in India, both among large companies and as a policy instrument formally intended to foster corporate contributions to the country's development goals. This book analyses this phenomenon in relation to broader political and economic changes induced by India's 'pro-business' development strategy. Using a systems-theoretical approach, the analysis shows that 'pro-business' policies have led profit-driven economic processes to increasingly override collective aspirations for social welfare, environmental protection, and democracy. In order to decipher how CSR changes the interplays between profit-making and developmental aspirations, the book provides detailed analyses of CSR in the cement industry and in regulatory policies adopted by the central government. It shows that CSR operates as an 'intermediary institution' which further enhances the autonomy of the economic system, as it makes profit-making more responsive to risks arising from competing collective values and interests.

List of tables and maps; List of abbreviations; Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. CSR, functional differentiation, and the problem of economic responsiveness; 3. Economic differentiation and the rise of India's 'embedded' corporate capitalism; 4. Increasing functional differentiation and the rise of corporate social responsibility; 5. CSR at work: economic responsiveness through risk management; 6. India's CSR public policies and the politics of economic responsiveness; 7. Conclusion; References; Index.

Damien Krichewsky is Post-doctoral Fellow in Forum Internationale Wissenschaft at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. He combines political sociology, economic sociology and sociology of organizations to study transformations of state-business relations in contemporary India. His research focuses in particular on how interplays between profit-driven economic activities and competing collective values and interests are observed and processed in India's democracy.