Corporate Social Responsibility To-Come: A Derridean Interruption of Transparency

Abstract

This study investigated the relation between rhetorics of transparency and organizational action. Digging into CSR literature from a philosophy of communication perspective, this project seeks to determine if corporate social responsibility delivers on the promises it makes of a better world. Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, the research first lays out his often overlooked contribution to the philosophy of communication, and then moves towards possible applications in deconstructing the perceived benefits of CSR, particularly in its transparent nature. By looking at organizational life from the Triple Bottom Line, this dissertation peels back the underlying rhetoric of planet, people, profit to discover an ethical project with gaps, fissures, and inconsistencies, in need of a future-oriented version that lives up to this challenge CSR sets out for itself in such precarious times