ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses how and why consultants turn the ideas about social responsibility of business into a management idea, known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It explores the research on CSR by examining the role of consultants in the commercialization of CSR. The chapter examines a group of consultants in Sweden as they established CSR consulting. Consultants are fashion-setters in the business community in several ways: they carry new ideas into corporations; they transform ideas into management knowledge. The coexistence of different labels might have been helpful when consultancies first started to sell social responsibility to corporations. In order to convince corporations about the value of CSR, different rhetorical strategies were used. The sociogram, based on the interviews, depicts interviewees' perception of competitors in area of CSR. Using interview data from consultants operating in Sweden, the chapter sought to explore the commercialization of CSR as a management idea by addressing the means as well as the motives of those involved.
