ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a continuum of such Corporate social responsibility (CSR') discourses which emphasizes the differences and similarities in the discourses' views about the appropriate relationship between business and society, the commercial sector and the public sector. The conservative CSR discourse continues to inform scholarly thinking on CSR although the ideological position is mostly known under the labels of shareholder theory or stockholder theory. A key idea of the social democratic CSR discourse is the concept of partnership. The partnership idea is based on the view that the current social model is too stringently based on the public sector solving social problems on its own. Unlike the liberal and conservative CSR discourses, the social democratic CSR discourse does not represent a stance against government involvement with CSR. Social reporting holds companies accountable to those stakeholders whom proponents of the radical CSR approach see as the most important: the environment and the global community.
