Asymmetries in the Social Responsible Investment Agendas: From an NGO Driven World to a Stakeholders Dialogue.

Abstract

NGOs have taken a dom inant position in setting the agendas of Corporate Responsibility and Socially Responsible Investment matters, thereby skewing the efforts of corporates to limit negative externalities towards their own agendas. As the latter remain to a certain extent unpredictable, corporates must deal with an informati on asymmetry. This situation can be explained by the historically defensive nature of Corp orate Responsibility codes established by companies under pressure of the NGOs. In this paper, I contend that only a new approach to Corporate Responsibility co uld reverse this asymmetry: one where the social responsibility matters are articulated in a political debate between all stakeholders of a company and wh ere conflicting interests are addressed in a deliberative process. To this end, the corporate world and the NGOs need to understand the need for a larger debate that includes all relevant stakeholders defined as the Public in the sense of Dewey. Latour and the Actor-Network theory provide us with a workable fr amework to structure such a dialogue, where participants have the authority and legitimacy to speak for the Public.