Paper short abstract:

Corporations seek to cross boarders between economy and well-fare. They enter areas formally ascribed to societal well-being and thereby define ways of "doing good" and the receiving communities. Drawing on ethnographic research, this paper deals with boundary work in CSR practices.

Paper long abstract:

Current shifts in state well-fare systems make businesses organizations even more powerful. In their push to take the lead in social issues they claim to compensate for political misconduct and step in where needed. Through collaboration with actors in civil society, in religious and political spheres they seek to access the realm of societal responsibility. Thereby organizations strengthen their role in today's society as work providers as well as well-fare contributors. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) shapes ideas of contemporary society by renegotiating what responsibility, fairness and well-being stands for. In every-day CSR practices corporations and recipients are constituted dialectically but not reciprocal since it constitutes around the idea that "giving without taking" requires somebody "taking without giving". However, in business language those recipients are referred to as "Stakeholders". Within this frame management, employees, future generations and disadvantaged groups can be defined as recipients of corporal goods.

In this paper, I draw on ethnographic data from my ongoing PhD project within a major corporation in Turkey, operating in a particularly criticized business sector. The boundary work of actors at top management level, in supply chain audits, international project meetings and other internal CSR activities serves as a lens through which the conceptualization of receiving communities and society at large can be explored. Applying identity theories from ethnicity studies, I use belonging and othering (Gingrich, Baumann 2006) to analyze the constitution of the different groups as well as power relations within the (re)configuration of contemporary society.