Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jean-Pascal GOND
Guido PALAZZO
Kunal BASU
Abstract
Key-words
Jean-Pascal GOND
ICCSR – University of Nottingham
Nottingham University Business School
Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road
Nottingham, NG8 1BB, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 115 846 6976
Fax: +44 115 8468074
Email: jean-pascal.gond@nottingham.ac.uk
Guido PALAZZO
HEC Lausanne
Switzerland
Ecole des HEC
Université de Lausanne
CH-1015 Dorigny, BFSH1
Email: guido.palazzo@unil.ch
Kunal BASU
Said Business School
University of Oxford
Egrove Park, Oxford OX1 5NY
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 1865 422717
Fax: +44 1865 422501
Email: kunal.basu@sbs.ox.ac.uk
Introduction
The aim of the paper is to outline some the potential pathologies of instrumental CSR
by linking together two streams of research: the sociological and historical analysis of
the Sicilian Mafia (relying primarily on the work of Diego Gambetta, 1993, as well as
the recent literature on organized and organizational crime) to contemporary discourse
on the nature and value of instrumental forms of Corporate Social Responsibility (e.g.
Kotler and Lee, 2005; McWilliams et al., 2006; critically: Vogel, 2005).
The paper is organized as follows: first, we parallel Mafia and business corporations to
demonstrate that the former could serve as a powerful metaphor to analyze corporate
deviances as well as describe an organizational type that a corporation might
metamorphose into under given contexts. These premises are next explored to reveal
shortcomings of instrumental CSR. Finally, we discuss some key lessons that could be
learned from analyzing the Mafia for purposes of enriching organizational research on
CSR.
Studying the Mafia’s social organization in parts of Sicily – namely the Cosa Nostra – as
it had existed over several centuries, Gambetta (1993) has adopted the lens of
economic analysis in describing its essential character and the typical contexts within
which it operates most successfully. The latter are characterized by mutually observed
low-trust expectations – as in the famous case of the ‘market for lemons’ described by
Akerlof (1970) where the buyer fails to ascertain the quality of the car he/she wishes to
purchase while the seller remains sceptical of receiving the payment reflecting the true
quality of the car. Consequently, both the buyer and the seller might agree to pay a
third party to guarantee the transaction, provided the added cost is lower than the
potential transaction loss expected by both parties. By paying such a premium, both
the buyer and the seller signal their respective credibility and benefit from the
transaction, although its potential value to both sides remains lower than one that could
be expected in a situation of perfect information and perfect trust. The viability of the
Mafia is thus directly related to the ‘demand for protection’ and the Mafia could be
viewed from an economic perspective as the ‘supplier of protection’. Gambetta
(1993:17) explains that the Mafia could best be understood as a profit maximizing
corporation acting on the market of private protection (see also the recent analysis of
the Camorra organization by Saviano, 2006) and concludes that “the main market for
Mafia service is to be found in unstable transactions in which trust is scarce and fragile.
Such in the case, for instance, with illegal transaction in which no legitimate
enforcement agency – in other words, the state – is available”.
It follows then, that the development of mafia-type activities is more likely where state
authorities have failed to enforce rules protecting property rights. Such a situation
might emerge when a nation or a region switches from one political regime to another,
for example, one that was characterized by feudalism (with a small number of owners)
or socialism to one where private capital becomes a key element of the economic order
(e.g., the transition of Russia from its Soviet past to its capitalist present) leading to an
increase in the demand for protection. Following Gambetta one might argue that the
Mafia operates in weak governance contexts in which it replaces the third party
enforcement power of the state to a certain degree through private and limited delivery
of protection.
As a business organization that operates in the market for private protection, the Mafia
requires and has developed its own corporate culture with specific rules and discernible
forms of behaviour. According to Gambetta (1993) the most important Mafia rule is the
Omertà which prescribes absolute silence that insiders must observe with respect to
outsiders. Mentioning even the name of the organization to outsiders is strictly
forbidden. The effective enforcement of Omertà on its members allows the Mafia to
blur its public presence. The power of the Mafia organization is thus built upon a
knowledge imbalance: the Mafia itself systematically gathers information on relevant
outsiders, while remaining shrouded in secrecy. The Omertà and the contributing
knowledge imbalance create a strong corporate culture with a clear view of the inside
and the outside. The outside, including all non-Mafia actors, is reduced simply to a
means for achieving the organization’s objectives. The Mafia can be understood as the
extreme form of organizational self-referentiality, intentionally strengthened by the use
of quasi-religious rituals during the initiation ceremony (Falcone, 1991). The
consequence, of course, of such an organizational self-referentiality is its social dis-
embeddedness described by John Dewey in his metaphor of the robber band:
The robber band cannot interact flexibly with other groups; it can act only
through isolating itself. It must prevent the operation of all interests save
those which circumscribe it in its separateness (Dewey, 1954: 148).
Mafia organizations are disembedded from their societal context even when they find
acceptance within their local contexts of operation. The Mafia is focused on its own
values, its own goals, its own methods, its own people, and its own language. All
actors outside of that system are mere means and never ends in themselves. They are
protected, promoted or simply left alone as long as they serve the self interest of the
Mafia. If outsiders become a threat, the Mafia organization will act against them. The
clear distinction between “us” and “them” serves as a source of legitimacy for the use
of violence. In order to avoid violence, it is important for the Mafia to cultivate a
certain image within its domain of operation. Thus, the enhancement of its own
trademark (making it synonymous with the promise of ‘effective and reliable
protection’) – undoubtedly the most vital asset of the organization – constitutes a key
organizational challenge (Gambetta, 1993: 127-155). In a rotten societal context, such
as a failed state, the Mafia is often perceived as the only reliable political actor, the
main or even the only employer and the only investor in public life and public
infrastructure through calculated infusions of philanthropy (see Dickie, 2004; La Licata,
1993; Falcone, 1991; Saviano, 2006; Stille, 1995).
Deviant activities of legal business firms are based on three preconditions that
demonstrate a striking parallel with the Mafia. First, such businesses tend to reap
advantage in contexts of weak governance. The absence or weakness of a third party
enforcer (hard law) as well as the absence of shared norms (soft law) can be found in
deregulated markets (Levine, 2005), unregulated markets in transformation economies
(Rawlinson, 2002; Rossouw, 1998) and in global markets that are not embedded within
stable political institutions (Seidman, 2003). In each of these cases, corporations
navigate in a governance vacuum that offers considerable incentives for morally
opportunistic and legally deviant behaviour. Second, organizational crime succeeds
best when it is supported by a strong corporate culture with clear values that direct the
behaviours of employees. Third, deviant business firms follow the same pathological
interpretation of the profit motive as the Mafia. Despite being an advocate for profit
maximization, even Milton Friedman (1970) had argued that such had to be framed and
tamed by legal rules and moral custom. As our following discussion shows, the absence
of both forms of regulation, hard and soft, create the environment in which deviant
firms engage in unbridled profit maximization leading often to striking parallels with
criminal organizations.
1. Deregulated Markets
While deregulation does not necessarily lead to deviant behaviour, the reduction of
rules and enlargement of autonomy of the actors increase the risk of deviance
significantly. The rising number of corporate scandals in the 90s, particularly the
collapse of Enron, illustrates the deviance risk of unregulated or deregulated business
operations. Enron positioned itself as a firm that would revolutionize the natural gas
industry, turning it from a slow and traditional business into a fast moving and
competitive sector. For Enron managers, who believed “in the virtues of deregulation”
(Levine, 2005: 726), beating the (weak) regulatory system and exploiting its gaps was
considered a paramount duty. As its CEO Jeff Skilling once argued: “We adhere to
rules. If the government sets up rules, we adhere to them. It’s like the tax code. No
one expects you to pay more taxes than you owe” (Tonge, Greer & Lawton, 2003: 12).
Levine has described the behaviour of Enron as the systematic attempt to disconnect
itself from societal norms (Levine, 2005). Combined with a strong corporate culture
that rewarded short term success and personal greed (Sims & Brinkmann, 2003), the
Enron case highlights the three conditions (mentioned above) of metamorphosing a
normal corporation into a Mafia-like organization.
2. Transition economies
Rossouw (1998) has pointed out that white collar crime more than doubled in South
Africa in the first year of transition from the Apartheid regime to the democratically
formed government. Likewise in Russia, the post-communist era was dominated by an
uncontrolled “gangster capitalism” (Rawlinson 2002, 301). Rossouw (1998: 1564) has
further claimed that “Unethical business practices can transform these young political
democracies and market economies of newly formed democracies into kleptocraties”.
In Russia as well as in South Africa, the new market economies overemphasized self-
interest as the main driving force of business transactions (Rawlinson, 2002; Rossouw,
1998) and both transition economies were dominated by a legally and morally unbridled
form of the profit motive. The latter derived from the broad assumption that liberal
market economies and Robber Baronism were in essence synonymous, that uncivilized
business practices were an unavoidable precondition for creating free markets
(Rossouw, 1998). Self-referentiality, the third element that links organized and
organizational crime, was also manifested through the self-centred behaviour of the
new corporations who chose to be unencumbered by broader societal responsibilities.
In fact, as described by Rossouw (1998: 1567), in the case of Russia “there seemed to
be a lack of commitment to curb unethical behaviour that might harm the new society”.
3. Globalized markets
CSR Instrumentation
In his historical review, Vogel (2005) argues that the main difference between the last
wave of CSR (in the 1960’s and the 1970’s) and the most recent (since the late 1990’s)
is the new economic focus. The new ‘CSR entrepreneurs’ are primarily interested in the
construction of markets – the ‘markets of virtue’ (Vogel, 2005) – and their discourses
are strongly shaped by the economic rationale: establishing the “business case” for CSR
by demonstrating that financial benefits could result from socially responsible
behaviours. Such an approach isn’t, of course, new in concept – even Milton Friedman
(1962 & 1970) saw no fault with a profit maximizing variety of CSR – and a very large
number of empirical investigations have striven to establish a (positive) correlation
between social and financial performance (more than 130 studies, according to Margolis
& Walsh, 2003; also see Margolis & Walsh, 2003; Walsh, Weber & Margolis, 2003;
Rowley & Berman, 2000). What is in fact new is the widespread adoption of the “CSR
for profit” theme by practitioners.
If the instrumental perspective on CSR was the only yardstick employed to assess
corporate performance in the domain social responsibility, the Sicilian Mafia could well
qualify as a socially responsible organization, indeed as a real CSR champion, in many
respects. A number of practices employed by the Mafia can be paralleled with the very
best of instrumental CSR practices worldwide. Table 1 provides illustrations by
comparing certain Mafia practices with those that are benchmarked as superior in the
CSR literature. The following three examples draw direct parallels between
instrumental CSR and time honoured Mafia practices.
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The above practices reveal how a mindset of instrumental CSR might potentially
contribute in the transformation of a legal business entity into a mafia-type
organization. Such a trend is illustrated in the third column of the Table 1, with
examples of how each of the instrumental CSR practices could be perverted into
irresponsible and damaging forms of managerial action. It is significant to note that
some of these perverted practices have in the past led to infamous CSR controversies.
For instance, the creation of customer dependency through (an apparently
philanthropic) free sampling of powered milk products by Nestlé had led to the
controversy over infant formula.
Agle and Kelley (1997) have suggested that an excessive focus on the outcomes of a
CSR programme designed with instrumental ends in mind could in fact encourage
deviant behaviours. They have shown how processes to manage CSR (in their case,
political fund raising) could easily come to transgress the basic principles of social
responsibility (for instance by stigmatizing non donors) and simply come to rest on
generating economic benefits. Further, as the case of the Mafia demonstrates, CSR
programmes should not be taken at face value, but attention focussed on their
underlying drivers.
Our account of the Mafia delivers three specific insights for both CSR analysis and
organization studies: (1) it points to the risks associated with viewing CSR simply as a
means rather than as an end; (2) it highlights the importance of a corporation’s social
embeddedness in achieving its CSR objectives; and (3) it invites a carefully
consideration of problems faced by multinationals in a global context. In the following
sections we discuss each of these in light of future research.
As the case of the Mafia clearly demonstrates, the adoption of ‘CSR best practices’ do
not necessarily guarantee socially responsible behaviour. A number of authors have
argued that several organizational factors might immunize managers from ethical
reasoning (see Swanson, 1995, 1999), with impression management helping to create
a symbolic shield around the company in order to guard it from external pressures
(Weaver et al. 1999).
Our analysis strengthens such insights by suggesting that CSR, if solely perceived as a
means employed towards instrumental ends, could reinforce corporate immunization
and create an ethical myopia among managers. Yet, the growing popularity of such a
means-driven view among practitioners is exemplified by Crane (2000) for green
marketing in the UK, for the French investment sector (Déjean, Gond & Leca, 2004),
and for NGOs in Israel (Shamir, 2005). Chatterji and Levine (2006) have recently
advocated that tools such as a code of conduct, often perceived as a way of enhancing
corporate responsibility, can in fact be counter-productive, immunizing corporations
from outsiders’ evaluations. In their view, the increasing number of social performance
metrics can paradoxically decrease corporate social performance. In a similar vein, our
research suggests evaluating CSR in ways that would differentiate firms simply using
CSR as a means and erecting a façade of social responsibility to those that actually
consider it to be the end goal. In this regard, the case of Enron appears to be the most
apt.
“Now, when most people hear the word ‘Enron’ they think of corruption
on a colossal scale... Not long ago, the same company had been heralded
as a paragon of corporate responsibility and ethics - successful, driven,
focused, philanthropic and environmentally responsible” (Sims &
Brinkmann, 2003: 243).
A unidimensional approach to a firm’s role in society, one that takes the legitimacy of
its activities for granted and focuses merely on the instrumental value of its CSR,
threatens to disembed the corporation and its decision-makers from interests other
than the maximization of profit. In the extreme case, it might even turn the
corporation into a mafia type of organization. Similar to the Mafia, if the firm’s
relationship with society is strictly based on a set of self-centred calculations, then it
risks isolating itself from external expectation and values. Oestreich has pointed at the
widening gap between internal and external perceptions of a firm: where external critics
might for instance see “families uprooted and lives destroyed” as a result of certain
corporate actions, managers might only see “the end of an old inefficient industry”
(Oestreich, 2002: 215).
Our analysis calls for empirical research to understand how corporations might re-
embed themselves into their relevant societal contexts and go beyond an instrumental
CSR orientation. If, as suggested by previous research, purely economic reasoning
should act as a barrier to such processes, it might be worthwhile to investigate how
managers or corporations could adopt alternatives modes of reasoning (e.g., ethical or
that oriented towards social responsibility) and/or balance self-interest with other
norms (see Rocha and Ghoshal, 2006).
The problems derived from an instrumental approach to CSR are further exacerbated by
the global expansion of corporate activities. Globalization has lead to conflicts between
national governments and corporations that operate multinationally (Habermas, 2001).
Such conflicts render it difficult to regulate corporate behaviour. Within the space
dominated by multinationals, there is often no global law, no sanction mechanisms, no
cross-cultural code of ethics, and no global government. Thus, globally active
corporations operate in a legal and moral vacuum were they themselves have to define
the limiting parameters of their own behaviours. Self-regulation of self-interested
actors, however, could turn out to be problematic. As King and Lenox (200) have
shown in their analysis of the Responsible Care Program of the chemical industry, self-
regulation without external monitoring can lead to opportunism. Instrumental CSR in
fact heightens the problems resulting from corporations attempting to replace the state
in terms of its political responsibilities. The key research question here, of course, is to
what extent the practice of instrumental CSR impedes the development of industry-
wide governance frameworks, given its own variety of social performance analysis.
Conclusion
The rising interest in CSR has led to the popularity of an instrumental approach that
reduces social responsibility to a handmaiden of profit maximization. The risk of
adopting such an approach lies in an emphasis on the means of achieving CSR
reputation rather than the end of social welfare. The instrumental view renders a
business firm culpable to similar illegal and immoral acts as the Mafia, particularly as
there might be significant parallels between their chosen acts and driving motivations.
Given particular contexts of operations, such parallels might indeed appear striking,
raising the danger of corporate scandals. Studying the pathologies of the Mafia, then,
might hold lessons for a legal business firm in terms of its contextual behaviours,
organizational culture, and its driving objective with respect to the maximization of
profit and the achievement of social welfare.
Table 1: Paralleling Mafia and Instrumental CSR Best Practices
Published Papers