Welfare mix, CSR and social citizenship

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an important undertaking by corporations in order to advance social citizenship. In the last decades a growing implication of businesses and NGOs in welfare development has run hand in hand with a noticeable increase of both: (a) the for-profit welfare provision of policies and services to the general public, and (b) those programmes made available by corporations to their employees. All these developments, together with the provision of social policies by governments, have coalesced into a welfare mix of entitlements, interventions and policy instruments with long-term effects for the improvement of citizens’ living conditions. In this paper an analysis of the worlds of welfare capitalism is contrasted with a CSR typology of policy governance within the context of the European Union. Considerations are made on the impacts that both the global order and the new social risks (NSR) have for the promotion of CSR and the advancement of social citizenship. A brief review of the case for the reconciliation of work and family life seeks to illustrate how CSR might induce a greater role for businesses in welfare systems. In the final section, proposals and hypotheses are put forward for future research endeavours.