The Butte of Corporate Social Advocacy (CSA)

Carroll's seminal work on the pyramid of corporate social responsibility (CSR) provided a metaphor outlining the foundational aspects of a responsible corporation. Subsequently, corporations have begun moralizing on issues that extend well beyond those that are related to the corporation's business, including many controversial social issues. The wide dispersion of moral stands from corporations on all kinds of controversial social issues has now moved the moral discussion of corporations beyond their corporate social responsibilities and into a newer area of corporate social advocacy (CSA). This paper provides a complementary metaphor—the butte of CSA—that takes into account this newfound moralizing of corporations on many controversial social issues. The foundations from this new metaphor are then used in a model to chart paths to various outcomes along a CSR–CSA continuum, helping to identify when a corporate stance will be considered more CSA compared to when a corporate stance will be considered more CSR. An explanation of how the butte of CSA and its CSR–CSA continuum model make contributions toward theory, practice, and future research is discussed. Overall, this article should enhance discussions on the morality of corporations, both in terms of corporations' responsibility to behave morally and also in terms of corporations' advocacy on how others should behave morally.