ABSTRACT
Corporate social responsibility is a well-established but deeply contentious area of study. In its history, it has variously advocated that corporate behavior should produce minimal social harm or result in added-value for the multiple stakeholders that the corporation impacts. This chapter assumes a managerial perspective, that is, one located inside the corporation and looking out toward the economic and social worlds in which it operates. It considers the critical non-human persona of the corporation, the social and ethical actors with which it engages, and the resulting confusion and misunderstanding regarding the games that are being played. It sees the corporate and social worlds as disconnected and mutually invisible to game players and suggests that corporate social responsibility can have no intelligible meaning, let alone positive outcomes, until these separated worlds are brought together through dialog.
