Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the UK University: From Idealism to Pragmatism

By providing public services, organisations in the public sector already address many aspects of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) frameworks. However, when they adopt New Public Management (NPM) ideology, these organisations focus on proceduralising, standardising, and measuring civic engagement, occluding the very ethical considerations buttressing public services. This chapter follows a UK University practitioner in her quest to make sense of the complex interweaving of intentions, in which standardisation and managerialisation of the practice of CSR, a highly idealised concept, have played a role. Despite her passionate arguments for disposing of the measuring of CSR activities, she describes how she was caught up in the very processes she had criticised, and draws on the perspective of complex responsive processes of relating to make sense of her experience.