Abstract
The topic of debate in Jeanette Brejning's (2016) book concerns the multifaceted connections between the social responsibility of a firm and the welfare state. Despite the significance of these connections and their policy implications, this aspect of the debate around corporate social responsibility (CSR) is generally disregarded in the literature—which makes Brejning's discussion involving the welfare state a most welcome addition to the existing corpus of academic research on the nature and effects of CSR.
The voluntary involvement of companies in social and environmental causes has been the subject of a growing research field in recent years. The majority of articles and books within the general field have nevertheless concentrated on “business,” which refers to the impact that CSR has on the profitability of businesses, rather than the “social causes” and companies’ responsibilities concerning them. Brejning's volume recognizes the need to bridge this lacuna—and does so rather admirably.
The central research questions she poses follow two strands of inquiry. First, how do welfare states affect CSR? And second, whether CSR has been used to lessen the effectiveness of the welfare state or to boost its potency in combating social exclusion. In developing her answers to these questions, among others, Brejning takes the welfare state's heartland, Europe, as the primary focus of the study. However, the book does not concentrate on European welfare states in and of themselves. Instead, she contends that examining mixed economies of welfare better focuses our attention on a wider variety of institutions, such as the market, the voluntary sector, the family, and the state. To accommodate this wider scope of analysis, Brejning employs a holistic and conceptual approach instead of a quantitative one.
This book's second chapter, located in the middle of the volume, offers a theoretical analysis of the mixed economy of welfare with a focus on how diverse sectors interact with one another. To investigate further the significance of these fields, Brejning employs the perspective of historical institutionalism as the key theoretical framework guiding the analysis. Given that it offers a consistent conceptual framework within which to comprehend the various kinds of formal and informal regulation that can be found in the context of mixed welfare economies, her choice to select historical institutionalism is undoubtedly a wise decision. In the third chapter, she develops several key concepts further and establishes CSR as a “free-floating” concept: that is, CSR is an “idea that has not yet been fully formalized in accordance with the specific methods in which it is utilized by organisations” (Brejning 2016). This is a difficult subject to respond to, since both CSR and the welfare state are inherently ambiguous. As an alternative, we may quantify CSR and the welfare state to see how they interact in the long term.
Brejning builds her central argument on the findings of 34 interviews carried out with professionals working in the fields of CSR and social exclusion in the European countries under study. When paired with the historical institutional approach, this methodology lends subtlety to her examination of the role that CSR plays in the mixed economy of well-being as well as useful comparative scope. Brejning develops this idea through a number of examples that demonstrate both the ambiguity of the juxtaposition of the welfare state and CSR and the diversity experienced across different country contexts. For instance, there has been a substantial amount of philanthropy in England since the Victorian era. Philanthropy, on the other hand, is met with mistrust in welfare states that are conservatively governed in continental Europe and the Nordic countries. Timing is another factor that plays a large role. Globalization has exerted a more powerful influence on the CSR agendas of countries that did not previously have such an agenda. The justification she advances for CSR becoming embedded in national institutions is a powerful one.
Concerning the book's key findings, I can't help but think that Brejning might have underestimated the magnitude of the shift that has taken place in advanced welfare states and, by extension, the part that CSR has played in bringing about those shifts. Past studies show that privatization is linked with social welfare (Selvam 2007). There are clear reasons to agree with her assertion that we will not see the “complete supplanting of the public sector by the private sector” (Brejning 2016). However, despite this, there remains a widespread belief in the academic literature that although welfare states still exist, changes directed toward the market have altered them in ways that are both subtle and profound. Even in Scandinavia, which has long been held as a model for the longevity of welfare states, a significant amount of liberalization has occurred. Expenses related to social protection and welfare are also, of course, associated with accelerated growth (Chadha and Chadda 2020). The impact of these instances is frequently downplayed in Brejning's text, which is problematic. Readers will be surprised to learn, for example, that “layoffs are not now actually happening on a major scale in England” (Brejning 2016). Yet former British Prime Minister David Cameron made significant cuts to the amount of money spent on social programmes around the time the author was writing. More engagement with modern political economy and historical institutionalist literature would have been beneficial to Brejning's claims and would have been useful inclusions to balance the central thrust of the argument more persuasively. The majority of my concerns involve how the author deals with the English case in the book. Although it is commendable that Brejning attempts to differentiate between several ideal types of CSR discourses, I am curious as to whether or not this is exactly how things work in practice—and it has to be said I remain at least partly unconvinced on this matter.
However, for the most part, Brejning's discussion forms a clear, compelling, and useful foray into the intersections between CSR and the welfare state. According to Brejning, the liberal rhetoric on CSR revolves around anti-government engagement in CSR. She demonstrates that this is also true of the self-understandings of the individuals she interviewed for the English CSR study—something that is undoubtedly accurate in terms of market-correcting interventionist regulation. Since the early 1980s, grants from the public sector have been awarded to “Business in the Community,” which is a business-oriented CSR organization mentioned multiple times throughout the volume.
In general, the book is a highly informative and enlightening voyage into a CSR area that has not been explored before. This book has a lot to offer readers interested in scholarly perspectives that extend beyond the common debates of the business benefits of CSR. Because the connection between business, social responsibility, and the (welfare) state has not been appropriately studied up to this point, this book should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in acquiring a more comprehensive awareness of the notion of social responsibility. Because the book is so well organized (for example, poignant discussions of the relevant policy, social, and economic implications are offered at the conclusion of each chapter), it is quite simple for non-specialist readers to grasp the general concepts presented. Yet the author simultaneously engages specialists and contributes to the extant literature in the theoretical and comparative contributions contained in this volume that prompt new ways of thinking about the subject matter, how to conceptualize it with innovation, and how to continue to apprehend its key consequences for now and the future.
In conclusion, this book ought to catch the attention not merely of those readers excited about CSR but also of all who are considering how to resolve the severe social problems and disparities of our era.
