Corporate Social Responsibility: A New Signifier? An Analysis of Business Ethics and Good Business Practice

The subject of this article is the increasing commitment declared by business enterprises to ethical business practices and corporate social responsibility. It is approached using Jean Baudrillard's analysis of the way 'signifiers' are attached to products in advanced capitalist society. In such societies signifiers are split off from signifieds and their referents (commodities). The main linguistic form is not the symbol, as in previous social settings, but the signal. Since the linguistic elements are fragmented, signifiers are able to 'float' in the social space and be combined with the signifieds and referents at will. Thus, the producers often emphasise not the use value of the commodities in their advertisement but instead randomly attach various qualities to commodities irrespective of their functionality or material utility. In this article the development of corporate social responsibility is seen as such a signifier and the implications thereof for the late-modern Global Political Economy are discussed.