Some preliminary notes: our intention is to outline some key systematic and analytic relations between ethical theories and the practice of CSR (or put more simply, between morality and CSR), and not to outline the “history of business ethics or CSR.” An “archaeology” of the existing body of literature and theory of CSR focusing on the relation between normative thoughts and CSR would indeed be interesting and valuable; however, our focus is on the systematic, not the empiric relations. Moreover, we do not hold the naı¨ve view that businesses and consultants
in fact are informed by only one ethical theory when they do CSR (or even any such theory at all.)2 Rather, businesses (and business scholars) are most of the time notoriously eclectic in their approach, foraging freely in the wood of principles and values as they see fit. We do not take a stand for or against that approach, but for reasons of exposition we generally ignore that fact. Finally, we should point out that we trace only the connections between the most well-consolidated and influential moral theories within the field of academic ethics and CSR. We cannot in this short space even begin to offer a comprehensive overview of all plausible moral theories and their relations to CSR.