Wheeler, Sally --- "Engaging Individuals" [2008] ELECD 295; in Boeger, Nina; Murray, Rachel; Villiers, Charlotte (eds), "Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility

Editor(s): Boeger, Nina; Murray, Rachel; Villiers, Charlotte

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847205612

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Engaging Individuals

Author(s): Wheeler, Sally

Number of pages: 23

Extract:

10. Engaging individuals
Sally Wheeler

INTRODUCTION
In this chapter I want to consider the relationship of the individual citizen to
CSR initiatives and NGO activism. My starting point is the popular disen-
chantment with traditional political structures that is evident in many national
democracies. In that disenchantment I see an opportunity, if not an obligation,
for the individual to adopt a position of political and ethical responsibility
towards those who find themselves less advantaged and to give effect to that
opportunity or obligation, with some caveats, through an interaction with and
a subsequent shaping of CSR and NGO activities. The chapter falls into four
sections. In the first section I examine the decline of traditional political partic-
ipation and speculate as to why this might be. In the second I look at ways of
inspiring personal political and ethical responsibility. I draw on the work of
Iris Marion Young, Paulo Freire and Emmanuel Levinas to construct these
ideas of political and ethical obligation. I see it as essential that individual citi-
zens engage and determine the nature of CSR and NGO activity and I explore
the reasons for this in the third and fourth sections. There my concern is with
the democratic deficit that occurs in both CSR policy and NGO activity if
there is mere passive endorsement of these activities and not positive citizen
engagement. My theme throughout this chapter is that despite their apparent
power, corporations are merely instruments of the will of the wider public in
which ...