Philipp Dorstewitz

presenting my response to j. vink’s “Designing for Plurality in Democracy by building reflexivity”, I feel the urge to divert from the conventional format of a commentary. In place of analyzing and recontextualizing her ideas or linking them with further relevant literature, I would like to use this opportunity to embark on a self-reflective inquiry into effects that Dr Vink’s impulses had on my own thoughts and interactions. I would like to interpret her paper as one step in a design process that is continuing as we are holding this meeting. At present, we are largely oblivious as to what the product will be, how its material and “invisible” aspects will be experienced, or what it...

This theoretical paper takes an agency-theoretic approach to questions of corporate social responsibility (CSR). A comparison of various extant frameworks focusses on how CSR agency emerges in complex multi-agent and multi-sector stakeholder networks. The discussion considers the respective capabilities and relevance of these frameworks – culminating in an integrative CSR practice model. A short literature review of the evolution of CSR since the 1950’s provides the backdrop for understanding multi-agent cross-sectoral stakeholder coalitions as a strategic determinant of today’s organizational behavior. The paper turns to Werhane’s coupling of moral imagination and systems thinking and forging stakeholder coalitions in problem contexts that were traditionally deemed intractable by for-profit organizations. However, it identifies the problem that the systems approach treats macro-agents (organizations, stakeholders) as given (“black-boxed”) and shies away from more radically re-imagining the possibilities of reassembling agency from the bottom up. Actor Network Theory (ANT) provides such a method, which strictly commits to treating organizational behavior as a product of technological, human and environmental micro-processes. ANT, however, is lacking a genuine moral deliberative stance in designing complex CSR coalitions. In an attempt to capitalize on the respective strengths of these frameworks (Systems thinking and ANT) the paper tends to a recent iterative series of “situational transactive” models that are rooted in the US pragmatist tradition and seek to capture intelligent planning processes in complex problematic contexts. The contribution proposes a new CSR practice model, which assigns specific roles to the theoretical contributions of ANT, system thinking and pragmatism in complex deliberation processes. This model can be industry-tested in a future study.