Defining social responsibility: a matter of philosophical

urgency for universities

Franois Vallaeys

1. Lack of theoretical definition: how can a responsibility be social?

The corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement has developed strongly in
recent decades. Quality standards now integrate the social and environmental
aspects of production and management processes: there is no longer quality
without responsibility. In this context, universities have also become the focus
of attention in recent years. We talk about the sustainable and/or responsible
campus, publish institutional reports on university social responsibility (USR),
and endeavour to relate academic training and research to social participation
that supports a more humane, inclusive and sustainable form of development.
However, the meaning and scope of CSR as a concept have not been explored
in any real depth. The resulting ambiguity generates endless confusion and
misunderstandings, and gives rise to debate about the aptness of the concept
and its unrealistic nature. Could CSR be no more than a rehash of good old
corporate philanthropy, intended perhaps to soften the disastrous impact of
unregulated global capitalism? Or is it really a new way of rationally managing
the economy in the global era of the risk society (Beck, 1986)? Should we
view this responsibility as an optional commitment undertaken voluntarily, or
take steps to make it compulsory? In the academic context, is social
responsibility a new model for administrative and academic management or just
a new label for the kind of solidarity outreach projects many universities have
pursued for years?
We are faced with a multitude of practices, but lack a clear theoretical
framework. What does it really mean to be socially responsible? Where is the
theory of social responsibility (SR) we can refer to? How can responsibility
which legally and morally speaking concerns autonomous individuals who can
be held accountable for their actionsbecome something social, a
responsibility of all and for all? Are we to ask society as a whole to be
responsible? Society is not a subject! Or will individuals have to take on the
burden of their entire society? They are part of society; they are immersed in it
and have no power over it! A social responsibility would be so broad, it is
impossible to see how it could ever be applied in practice. It could not possibly
serve as a sound basis for compelling citizens and organisations to act in a

certain way. At best, it would be little more than an invitation to sign up to a

commitment of solidarity in tackling social issues (poverty, discrimination,
pollution, etc), rather than a responsibility as such.[1] In fact, this is the way
people spontaneously view SR, despite claims that it is not philanthropy.
None of these philosophical questions have been answered, and this has
practical implications: ISO 26000, the social responsibility standard, does not
provide for rigorous certification of clearly defined practices. Rather, it is the
result of a process of negotiation, conducted over many years and involving 90
countries and all relevant social actors. Organisational social responsibility is
still a fuzzy concept that anyone can lay claim to. And because we have no
clear idea what responsibility we are talking about, it remains no more than a
voluntary commitment that no one can challenge by invoking a clearly defined
obligation. So we need to do a bit of philosophy to better understand what we
are dealing with. There is nothing more practical than a good theory, as Kurt
Lewin (1952) said.
2. From responsibility to social responsibility

The first question we need to consider is: what is responsibility? Responsibility

means being accountable to others for your actions, and being accountable for
the future in general. It is an attribute of beings who have the power to make
promises and fulfil them, i.e. who are able to to view the future as the present
and anticipate it (Nietzsche, 1887). This means that humanity has gained a
power unknown in the animal world: the ability to escape the immediacy of the
present in order to concern itself with, imagine and shape the futureto act to
select certain future states of the world and rule out others. This promise of a
desired future is never made alone or unilaterally. One cannot make promises
in a vacuum or in isolation. We make promises to others, and before others. As
a result, they expect something of us and judge us based on what we promised
to do: our promises bind us (liability) and oblige us to justify our actions and
decisions (accountability).
Some promises are voluntary or optional (signing a contract, swearing eternal
love, etc); others are binding (honouring a signed contract, bringing up our
children, etc). But all promises imply accountability; they make the promisegiver responsible before others for a mission and liable to sanction in the event
of failure or betrayal. Our responsibilities are burdens, but they also give us
honour and dignity. All human beings exist in a social space of recognition, in

which they are debtors, because they are expected to behave in certain ways
rather than others. This debt is what makes each of us exist as a person rather
than a thing. A human being of whom nothing is expected, one not regarded as
a giver of promises, would be a creature stripped of humanity. There is no
humanity without responsibility.
However, no promise is certain to be fulfilled; the future offers no guarantees.
For one thing, human beings are fragile, hence the need for a threat of sanction
to ensure that promises are actually fulfilled. There is no responsibility without a
moral and legal orderunderpinned by an element of coercionput in place to
provide a certain continuity of general social trust. Moreover, contingencies and
unforeseen circumstances often arise. Risks lie in wait. That is why promising
and forgiving are so closely related, why humans organise themselves
collectively to tame the future (something they could never accomplish as
individuals), and why the responsibilities attributed to individuals are limited.
One cannot ask more of individuals than is reasonable: to control their acts in a
rational way, following pre-established rules and social missions, within the
limits of their power and knowledge. If someone did not know better, or could
not have acted otherwise, he or she must be forgiven: It wasnt their fault. Fate
is forgiving: Fate implicates no one, responsibility someone (Ricur, 1995).
There is no responsibility unless someone is implicated rather than no one. A
negligent person whose behaviour has increased the risk of harm can be
reproached for having acted irresponsibly, even if it was not done on purpose,
because the behaviour is the person. In contrast, anything that happens by
chance is either no ones fault or the will of the gods. Each historical period sets
limits on the responsibilities it recognises based on its power of control over the
future. A boundary is drawn between events for which someone is accountable
and occurrences for which no one is to blamebetween who and what. The
more limited the cultures technical power to affect the future, the more
important the role played by gods or by chance; the greater the technical power,
the greater the degree of human responsibility for what happens.
But now chance is disappearing and human beings are starting to have god-like
powers: we are actually doing what all ages before ours thought to be the
exclusive prerogative of divine action (Arendt, 1958). Science blurs the once
clear line between divine and human powers; nature and culture become
intertwined. Consider issues such as the nuclear threat, genetic modification of
organisms, climate change and instant communication, to name a few. Our

local action, now global in its reach, generates processes that affect the entire
human and non-human world. We are now part of a bio-anthropo-sphere and
inhabit our own objects, which have become what Michel Serres calls worldobjects, i.e. objects with dimensions that are worldwide in scale, and which
therefore have global impacts.
There is no way to externalise problems in a globalised world, for the simple
reason that there is no outside to externalise things to. Everything rebounds
and is related to everything else; human action affects natural processes and
vice versa. We can no longer put things down to fate; there is no more no ones
fault. Even the temperature of the planet has become a political matter,
negotiated between heads of state. Everything has become human, all too
human, and has an impact on everything else: my refrigerator on the ozone
layer, my trousers on the school attendance of children in India, my purchases
on endocrine disruption in my children, my vote on the autonomy of my
descendants... The actions of each of us, within the narrow sphere of our
everyday lives, now have global and systemic implications. It is difficult to
control and to bear, hence the need to renegotiate the narrow boundaries of
responsibility, which must be adjusted to fit the new worldwide scale. The time
has come for a global ethic that does not allow us to remain within the narrow
confines of a personal morality that focuses only on each individuals moral
responsibility.
With global power comes global responsibility. It would be unjust, however, to
attribute this responsibility to isolated individuals or only to certain people who
have great power (heads of state or the executives who run multinationals, for
example). To do so would give too much responsibility to those who lack real
power, or too much power to those who are not accountable to any
countervailing power. We therefore have to share this global responsibility, to
democratically establish it as a promise of co-responsibility among all. This
gives rise to the notion of social responsibility, which calls for the creation of a
responsible society in which everyone participates, according to their power (as
an executive, entrepreneur, homemaker, consumer, student, professional, etc),
in the dignified and sustainable future of humanity, in coordination with all other
actors, and under a mutual pledge of responsibility. This collective responsibility
can only be established on the basis of a broad political consensus that our
world needs to be managed in a rational waythat we must transform the
planetary Titanic (as Edgar Morin puts it) into something resembling a global
Noahs Arka sustainable ship.

3. Defining social responsibility: managing impacts and co-responsibility for

sustainability

This generous notion of collective, consensual social responsibility is one we

can easily grasp, but what might it mean in concrete terms? How is this social
responsibility to be operationalised in organisations? The ISO 26000 standard
provides a definition that merits consideration: social responsibility
is responsibility for the social and environmental impacts that result from the
decisions and actions of organisations (Vallaeys, 2008b, 2009).
The same definition, expressed in terms of managing impacts, was also
recently adopted by the European Commission,[2] which has finally criticised
and moved beyond the very poor definition of CSR offered in its Green
Paper (2001), in which social responsibility was characterised as simply a
voluntary commitment beyond any legal obligationin other words, a pseudoresponsibility: always optional, dependent on the goodwill of organisations, and
with no possibility of demanding accountability. If social responsibility were
simply a voluntary commitment, it would be better not even to call it a
responsibility; responsibility implies a duty of accountability, a duty which others
may call on the responsible subject to fulfil (Vallaeys, 2008a). If no one can
challenge a promise-givers actions based on the promise made, if no one can
demand that the promise be fulfilled, then there is no promise and no
responsibility; there are only declarations of good intentions, which can easily
turn out to be no more than bluster. The two definitionsthe one given in ISO
26000 and the one formulated by the European Commissionallow us to
identify the key features of social responsibility:
1. It is a responsibility of organisations for the impacts they cause. The negative
impacts (social and environmental) of their activities should (ideally)
progressively disappear. This is the pledge they are called on to make.
2. This responsibility requires a form of management that seeks to make society
sustainable by eliminating unsustainable negative impacts and promoting
sustainable forms of development.
3. Social responsibility is not beyond and outside the law; it works in coordination
with legal obligations. Laws should stipulate the negative impacts that are
prohibited and drive socially responsible behaviour on the part of all actors.
Social responsibility does not start beyond the law, as one often hears; it is
rooted in the law and plays a role in ensuring that laws are complied with and
improve over time.

4. Social responsibility requires coordination between the stakeholders who are

able to act on the negative impacts diagnosed. They must work together on the
basis of co-responsibility to find mutually beneficial solutions (to build value for
all social actors and develop win-win solutions, rather than creating value for
some at the expense of others).[3]
4. From CSR to OSR, including the sciences and universities

The immediate consequence of this definition is a shift away from the exclusive
focus on companies: CSR is dead; long live organisational social responsibility
(OSR)! Indeed, social responsibility is not a concern for companies alone; it
calls for the building of a society that is responsible for itself, and pursuing this
goal requires the collaboration of all social actors, both private and public, profitdriven and not-for profit. This also means (1) that an organisation can never be
socially responsible on its own, because the impacts of its actions always spill
over and involve other organisations; and (2) that it will never reach a point
where it can claim to be fully socially responsible, because to do so it would
have to be able to guarantee that its activities cause no negative impact
whatsoever, which is strictly speaking impossible.[4]
Two points remain to be clarified: what is sustainability, and what does it mean
to be responsible for impacts rather than acts?
On the first point, to say something is unsustainable suggests that it is absurd,
unbearable or unjust. An argument can be unsustainable, as can a pain or a
political situation. The notion of sustainability forges a link between relevance to
the functioning of a system (a sustainable system is able to maintain itself,
continue operating, regenerate and repair itself, develop, etc) and the justness
of that system (a sustainable system is rational, fair, equitable, legitimate,
deserves to exist, etc). The definition of sustainable development proposed by
Gro Harlem Brundtland in a report published by the World Commission on
Environment and Development highlights the aspects of sustainability linked to
justice, with respect to both the present-day poor and future generations:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
It contains within it two key concepts:

- the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to
which overriding priority should be given; and
- the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social
organisation on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs
(Brundtland Report: Our Common Future, UN, 1987).
An economic and social model in which the welfare of some is guaranteed at
the expense of the present and future impoverishment of others is thus
unsustainable (though unfortunately this does not mean it is any less
durable). The transformation of the global economy towards a green
economy (UNEP, 2011) that is more equitable and takes more care of the
resilience of the biosphere is, of course, the ultimate goal of OSR. This means
much more than just correcting the behaviour of companies: the goal of social
responsibility is to transform our mode of existence on the planet. We are
responsible for ensuring the dignified and autonomous existence of our fellow
human beings and distant descendants (intra- and inter-generational justice).
We must therefore ensure the transition from an economy based on the
depletion of fossil energy stocks (a system that deprives all future generations
of these resources) to one based on the use of renewable energy flows, which
by their nature take nothing away from coming generations (using the sun or the
wind to produce our electricity today does not stop them from doing same
tomorrow, or from pursuing any other course of action). Social responsibility
must be grounded in a universal ethical and political duty: that of justice and
sustainability (Vallaeys, 2011).
The second point: what does it mean to be responsible for the impacts of acts?
This question points to the deeper meaning of this unusual social
responsibility. Moral and legal responsibilities are concerned with what people
do (acts). Social responsibility, in contrast, is concerned with the impact of what
we do (impacts)the collateral effects of actions which by their nature are
neither directly perceived nor desired (systemic, cross-system and global
effects). Acts can be attributed to a particular agent. Impacts are anonymous;
they have a fated quality, even when caused at least in part by human activity
(as in the case of global warming, for example). Impacts are not directly
attributable to specific agents. If they were, they would be acts. To assign blame
for negative impacts is going too far; they are social phenomena that should
rightly beattributed to society. So, social responsibility is not personal moral
responsibility or legal liability.

The dilemma was already known in the Middle Ages. If I want to be responsible
only for my acts, and I wash my hands of all the misfortunes of the world
caused by those acts without my wanting it to be soa comfortable position for
meI am an irresponsible agent. On the other hand, if I also want to be
responsible for all the long-term consequences of my acts, the responsibility
becomes too great for me to bear as an individual. My unrealistic desire to
assume responsibilities I cannot possibly take on once again puts me in the
position of being an irresponsible agent. In each case, my desire to act
responsibly leads to me being irresponsible. The dilemma can only be resolved
on the basis of ethical-political decisions and by establishing extended coresponsibility between social actors with enough knowledge and power to have
an influence on the negative impacts identified. Thisno more, no lessis
social responsibility.
Today, it is scienceand the cause-and-effect relationships it revealsthat
allows us to update this dilemma, to transform impacts into knowledge and then
almost into acts. As soon as we begin to grasp the relationship between a
particular social practice and a particular public problem (for example, between
CO2 emissions and climate change, the industrial food system and increased
cancer rates, economic deregulation and social and fiscal blackmail between
states), the impact ceases to be seen as a matter of fate (no ones fault) and is
recognised as a collateral effect generated by a set of social interactions (our
responsibility, since it is a social effect). The anonymous impact becomes
our impact. The impact loses its anonymous character and we are obliged to
tackle it collectively based on our shared responsibility. It is not yet our act, but
neither is it a chance event. To name this paradoxical category of actions that
are neither acts nor a matter of fate, we could coin a new term: impaction
half impact, half act. In addressing the negative impactions of social acts, the
duties of justice and sustainability demand that we adopt an approach based on
the principles of responsibility and reparation, as well, of course, as
enforceability and accountability.
This, in a nutshell, is social responsibility. We see that it depends mainly on
the advancement of scientific knowledge and its ability to alert us to the
negative collateral social effects of our acts. This is why the social responsibility
of the sciencesand, of course, university social responsibility and the critical
capacity it impliesare so crucial: there is no way we can assume responsibility
for impacts that have not been clearly identified. Again, we need to move
beyond the narrow focus of CSR and consider the social responsibility of all

organisations. We have a duty to reflect on, investigate and transparently

disclose all the negative social and environmental impacts of our actions.
Scientific, professional and academic actors have a key role to play in this
project.
But what is the relationship between the impactions we identify and
responsibility? There are two possibilities. In some cases, the causal
relationship between a practice and a problem may be established directly
through a process of investigation. The cause of the problem can then be
legally prohibited, because it is now equivalent to an act of negligence (for
example, when an industrial process is shown to be harmful to health, though
this was not known before). The logic that applies in this case is that of legal
responsibility: the appropriate course of action is to prohibit the act and penalise
any infringements committed by those responsible under the law. Unfortunately,
in reality it is often necessary to spend years fighting business lobbies to get the
right law passed and make all social actors accountable for the risk. Any
company that claims to be socially responsible should never participate in
such lobbies. Instead, they should call for the enactment of laws that are as
stringent as possible in order to move more quickly towards a truly sustainable
economy (while incidentally making life more difficult for their less scrupulous
competitors).
In other cases, entire modes of production, ways of life and forms of
consumption are at stake and lie behind the systemic problems diagnosed
(ecological, economic, cultural, etc). In such cases, the fight against negative
impacts is a matter ofsocial responsibility, i.e. co-responsibility publicly
advanced by the organisations and activists championing a particular cause,
who will use all legitimate means available to control and reorient the social
practices identified as problematic (including legal, technical, cultural,
educational, ethical, regulatory, economic and political means, as well as the
media). Social responsibility for social impacts is not a science but an art: the
art of governance, which seeks to orient from a distance systems we know are
characterised by a great deal of inertia. It is the art of shared regulation, of
quality and responsibility statements (pledges an organisation makes before
society as a whole to maintain a high level of quality in its practices), of soft law,
though hard law is also used when possible. But it is not only a matter of law.
Social responsibility invites us to practise hybrid regulationpublic and private
at the same timeto use market processes to drive voluntary decisions, i.e. to

use spontaneous regulation processes as an institution for self- and coregulation.

If we could start making a concerted effort to diagnose and address each
organisations negative impacts, social responsibility initiatives would no doubt
be more uncomfortable at first, but the end result would be greater effectiveness
and happier final outcomes, because social responsibility is not easy altruistic
action aimed at helping the needy outside an organisation; it is the
uncomfortable process of reorganising internal routines to support their
continuous improvement (elimination of impactions). This is the value of a
good theory: to avoid wasting time at the practical application stage. The
imperatives of social responsibility are very clear: (1) we must diagnose and
manage the negative impacts generated by our organisations; (2) we must do
so in networks of co-responsibility that link us to all the actors who can help us
reduce and eventually eliminate these negative impacts; and (3) our ultimate
goal is to work together to build a more just and sustainable society for our
fellow human beings and distant descendants. So if its clear, lets do it!

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Beck U. (1986 [1998]) La sociedad del riesgo, Barcelona, Paids.
Morin E. (2004 [2006]) El Mtodo 6: la tica, Madrid, Ctedra.
Nietzsche F. (1887 [1996]) La genealoga de la moral, Madrid, Alianza Editorial.
UNEP (2011) Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty
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Ricur P. (1995 [1999]) Lo Justo, Madrid, Caparrs.
Serres M. (1990) [2004]) El contrato natural, Valencia, Pre-Textos.
Vallaeys F. (2008a) Formacin tica y responsabilidad social universitaria en la era de la
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el contexto global, Xalapa, Universidad Veracruzana.
Vallaeys F. (2008b) Responsabilidad Social Universitaria: una nueva filosofa de gestin tica
e inteligente para las universidades, in: Educacin Superior y Sociedad, Year 13, No 2,
September 2008, Caracas, UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin
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primeros pasos, Mexico, McGraw-Hill Interamericana Editores, Inter-American Development
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[1] The difference is that others can call me and challenge me based on my responsibility,
even against my wishes, whereas a commitment depends entirely on my wishes, and no one
can compel me to desire a particular outcome. Therefore, social responsibility should on no
account be treated merely in terms of social commitment. This formulation would make it simply
a matter of optional goodwill: if I want, when I want, and as far as I want.
[2] Communication to the European Parliament of 25 October 2011 (COM [2011] 681 final).
[3] This is captured in the notion of shared value: Porter, M. and Kramer, M. Creating Shared
Value: How to Reinvent Capitalism and Unleash a Wave of Innovation and Growth. Harvard
Business Review, JanuaryFebruary 2011.
[4] This last point calls into question the multitude of social responsibility awards that have
sprung up in recent decades. Fostering the social responsibility of organisations is a noble aim,
but rewarding organisations that still cause many negative impacts sends the wrong signal to

the public, namely, that the socially responsible label can be pinned on anyone provided they
do a few good deeds.

About the author

Franois Vallaeys is a French philosopher who specialises in social

responsibility and the ethics of sustainability. He holds a doctoral degree in
Philosophy (University of East Paris) and completed the first French philosophy
thesis on issues related to social responsibility and its ethical foundations
(awarded the 2012 university thesis first prize by the General Council of Val-deMarne). Vallaeys taught at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru for 15 years
and was one of the founders of the university social responsibility (USR)
movement in Latin America. He is a researcher and external consultant to the
IDBs Social Capital, Ethics and Development Initiative, and co-author of a
handbook on first steps for implementing USR (McGraw Hill, 2009). He has
trained teachers in ethics and USR via the OAS Educational Portal of the
Americas (20042008) and advised numerous Latin American universities. He
currently resides in France and acts as an adviser to the Regional Observatory
on Social Responsibility in Latin America and the Caribbean (ORSALC
UNESCO).