Building the Case for CSR: Four Decades of Philippine Corporate Discourse on the Role of Business in Social Development

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a fluid and malleable concept. The dynamic, some would even say ambiguous, conceptualization of CSR stems from its socially constructed nature which opens it to the influence of discursive practices and contestations of several actors including business, social development practitioners, civil society, government, and the academe. This paper trains the spotlight on the business side of the discourse on CSR. The paper shows how Philippine companies, through their public communications, contribute to the construction of the CSR concept and the role of business in social development. The paper achieves this through a discourse analysis of corporate communications in the annual reports and some select public documents of Philippine Business for Social Progress, the largest corporate-led social development foundation in the Philippines. The paper looked at thematic changes in Philippine business’ CSR discourse from the 1970s to the present and found an increasingly explicit presentation of a business case for CSR over the past four decades.