In Search of Ethics: From Carroll to Integrative CSR Economics

Archie Carroll’s ground-breaking research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is widely acknowledged. Revisiting his classic CSR pyramid framework, the paper evolved a novel synthesis of ethics and economics, yielding an ‘integrative CSR economics’. This approach to CSR is conceptually coherent since it is grounded in one ‘discipline’ or research program only; i.e. economics. This reduces conceptual confusion which today is still attributed to many CSR approaches, especially ones that tried to synthesize CSR concept in a grand interdisciplinary manner. On this basis, the paper argued for integrative CSR economics on ethical, theoretical, empirical and practical grounds.