Corporate social responsibility and strategic management: the prospects for converging discourses

The discourse of strategy is an ongoing project, as evidenced by recent attempts to introduce a sociological element to research and practice by the European academy in response to perhaps more traditional epistemologies rooted in rational economic thought. This paper proposes that the development of strategy from its rational roots has seen increasing prospects for convergence with the developing discourse of corporate social responsibility (CSR) through notions of stakeholder management, knowledge management and the meta-narratives of collaboration and complexity. It is further proposed that such a convergence offers prospects for a holistic approach to CSR arguably lacking in the predominantly discipline-based lenses currently deployed.