The Caring Corporation: Using Care Ethics to Shape the Strategic and Altruistic CSR Roles

We use care ethics to determine corporate social responsibility's (CSR's) morality, stakeholder priorities, and appropriate CSR activities. We focus on two key CSR dimensions: strategic CSR (SCSR)—corporate philanthropy benefiting the enterprise's primary constituencies and one or more of its secondary constituencies—and altruistic CSR (ACSR)—corporate philanthropy possibly costing one or more of the business's core constituencies in order to benefit one or more of its secondary stakeholders. Our ethical analysis uses a third CSR dimension: ethical CSR (ECSR)—avoiding moral harm to stakeholders by fulfilling economic, legal, and ethical responsibilities. This analysis combines care ethics with deontological ethics. We conclude that, ethically, caring CSR must avoid ACSR, which transfers resources from primary to secondary stakeholders and lacks reputational and motivational CSR returns to the firm, unless primary stakeholders consent to it. Second, CSR must embrace core and secondary stakeholder-welfare-benefiting SCSR. Secondary stakeholders should not be cared for at the expense of primary constituencies, whose liberty rights and distributive justice managers must not sacrifice for secondary stakeholders' welfare rights and perceived social justice. To maximize efficiency and enhance corporate image, the domain for SCSR should embrace the corporation's mission, values, and core competencies.