ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how socially responsible corporations in India discursively construct the meaning of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in online narratives. It also examines how these narratives align with or reject extant conceptualizations of CSR. The chapter looks at the websites and online annual reports of only the top 50 companies that have been recognized as socially responsible in India. It examines how corporations have articulated their understandings of CSR in the Indian context. The chapter offers an inside-out or emic view of CSR from the perspective of one of the largest and fastest growing emerging economies in the world with a long history of CSR. It proposes relevant concepts from ancient Vedic and Indian cultural teachings to explain the discursive constructions of meanings of a concept that has immense significance in the world today, given the reach and impact of corporations in modern societies.
