Corporate Social Responsibility and

Dehumanization

Gareth Craze

Philosophy of Management

ISSN 1740-3812

Philosophy of Management
DOI 10.1007/s40926-018-0085-2

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https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-018-0085-2

Corporate Social Responsibility and Dehumanization

Gareth Craze 1

# Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is widely viewed as an important feature of

contemporary business. It is characterized by the notion that organizations ought to voluntarily
recognize and, where possible, practically mitigate the social impacts of its business activities,
and that doing so allows organizations to meet the expectations of affected stakeholders.
However, CSR initiatives are almost universally tethered to the idea that corporations exist to
serve their own performance objectives, and that these will ultimately take precedence over
wider macro-social considerations. The present paper proposes that this conception of CSR
mirrors the underlying neurological tension between the domains of analytic reasoning and
empathic or socioemotional reasoning, and the neural correlates of each. Using the opposing
domains hypothesis, it is proposed that CSR, as it is currently conceived of and practiced, is
antithetical to social and ethical reasoning at the level of the brain, can increase the scope for
dehumanization, and demands calling the ethical dimensions of CSR into question.

Keywords Corporate social responsibility . Business ethics . Neuroscience . Neurophilosophy .

Separation thesis

B[T]he socially responsible corporation is a fundamental impossibility…firms and

constituencies will always engage in interactions whose outcome will lead to hedonic
pricing of virtues and vices^. (Devinney 2009:53)
Differing definitions abound as to what exactly constitutes corporate social responsibility
(CSR), and its various conceptualizations, both competing and complementary, very often
shed precious little light as to how performance in this domain might be benchmarked and its
impact quantitatively measured (Dahlsrud 2008). Different social and environmental dimen-
sions are variously held up as categories of interest, yet none capture or provide any precise
information about how each might be balanced against each other with regard to developing

* Gareth Craze
gjc48@case.edu

1
Department of Organizational Behavior, Brain, Mind and Consciousness Lab, Weatherhead School of
Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
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optimal strategies for minimizing wider societal impact. In spite of this, CSR initiatives are
now widely held up as an important aspect of modern organizational activities (Kotler and Lee
2008) and are broadly predicated on the notion that corporations, as primarily economic units,
do not solely produce economic impacts, and that voluntary efforts should be made on the part
of organizations to offset such impacts, and particularly the worst excesses thereof. There is an
increasingly well-subscribed belief that CSR permits organizations to fulfill a wide range of
stakeholder obligations, and to meet or exceed the expectations society places upon it in terms
of ethical and responsible corporate behavior (Whetten et al. 2002).
And yet despite this apparent concordance, a number of issues remain unresolved with regard to
CSR’s theoretical grounding and degree of empirical support, which has in turn muddied the
waters for practitioners in terms of the criteria for successful implementation of CSR initiatives.
The decision to implement a CSR policy platform very often represents a watershed event in an
organization’s evolution; a recognition, however ultimately motivated, that they must Bpay their
dues^ with regard to their social contract (Amao 2008). And yet most of the models and
frameworks made available to practitioners are derived from scholarly work which has collectively
drawn unclear conclusions about how best to develop and practically implement CSR initiatives
(Maignan et al. 2005). There is significant disagreement, for example, about whether orienting an
organization toward a CSR focus necessitates a wholesale paradigmatic and operational shift on the
company’s part, or whether this is more practically and effectively achieved through an incremental
process of focus transformation – through which a firm might steadily transition away from a
narrow focus on purely economic concerns (Hart and Milstein 1999). A number of other such
prescriptive dimensions to best practice in this area remain similarly disputed, and many of the
underlying conceptualizations of CSR giving rise to them are theoretically nascent and await
empirical examination (Lindgreen and Swaen 2010), despite the better part of five decades of the
term Bcorporate social responsibility^ occupying the lexical terrain of business.
Moreover, much of the scholarly conversation surrounding CSR has seen a shift in terms of
the focus placed on understanding its ethical and normative dimensions. Historically, scholars
have tended to analyze CSR at the macro social level - in terms of the wider community or
global citizenry in which an organization is embedded, and the determinable effects of its CSR
policy on such a wider stakeholder system. More recently, the focus has largely shifted to the
organizational level; and the impact CSR implementation has on organization-centric perfor-
mance outcomes. In lockstep with this development has been a commensurate shift in the
degree of normative emphasis placed upon CSR among scholars, with researchers moving
away from a largely ethics-focused approach to assessing CSR toward one steeped in
utilitarian concerns about organizational processes and metrics (Lee 2008).
This sea change among scholars has important implications for practitioners, and may also
be instructive with regard to the aforementioned lack of clarity facing organizations as to how
best to implement CSR initiatives and assess their relative success based on verifiable criteria.
Du, Bhattacharya and Sen (2010:8) observe that CSR activities "are driven not just by
ideological thinking that corporations can be a powerful and positive force for social change,
but more by the multi-faceted business returns that corporations can potentially reap from their
CSR endeavors", a position consistent with Devinney (2009:49) that "corporations exist to
generate economic returns, not to solve societal problems. They live to optimize for them-
selves (i.e., their near stakeholders: shareholders, managers, employees, suppliers, govern-
ments, etc.), not the general public." Furthermore, as argued by Banerjee (2008), CSR, to the
degree that it is authentically predicated on social responsibility, cannot be assessed through
purely economic criteria. If responsibility to social concerns that transcend the immediate
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organization is to mean anything at all, then CSR cannot be developed or deployed by

prioritizing the pragmatic concerns and economic realities of the organization above all else.
The present paper proposes that this impasse reflects an underlying irreconcilability, as a matter of
organizational ethical priority, between the fulfillment of organization-level performance objectives
and the achievement of macro-socially beneficial outcomes. This divide has been referred to in the
business ethics literature as the separation thesis, which in turn is drawn from divergent stakeholder
theory (see Freeman 1999; Harris and Freeman 2008; Sandberg 2008). The separation thesis holds
that corporate economic and ethical concerns are distinct values, demanding different practical and
normative approaches, and which are motivated by different organizational antecedents..
While I acknowledge the inherent complexity and substantial moral nuance within organi-
zational life posited by Harris and Freeman (2008) in their rejection of the separation thesis, I
submit that the separation in question can be made sense of at a micro level of analysis.
Specifically, I argue that the neurological tension between the opposing domains of analytic
reasoning and socioemotional reasoning in the human brain (Rochford et al. 2017) can be used
to affirm the value of the social implications inherent in the separation thesis. As it relates to
differential neural network activity and subsequent behaviors, an instrumentalist (or
economically-concerned) view of the very people constituting the social entity to which the
corporation is responsible may produce the unfortunate behavioral consequence of
dehumanizing those very people. This in turn highlights an even more fundamental separation
of ethical and economic concerns than those posited by the likes of Sandberg (2008).
While adopting a neuroscientific lens to examine the ethics of CSR necessitates utilizing a
micro level of analysis (since brains are, by definition, localized to one individual, and carry
with them a particular individual’s distinctive neural and psychological architectures), collec-
tive intentionality (see Tomasello and Rakoczy 2003) provides a vehicle through which a
composite of individual brain states can be pressed into the service of shaping collective goals
and actions, such as those of CSR initiatives. As observed by Tomasello & Rakoczy
(2003:121-122), "[C]omplex social institutions are not individual inventions arising out of
humans' extraordinary individual brainpower, but rather they are collective cultural products
created by many different individuals and groups of individuals over historical time" and,
further, "social and cultural interaction and learning depend fundamentally on the way human
individuals understand one another." Understanding one another using either of the opposing
domains of analytical and socioemotional reasoning has significant implications for the way
collective intentionality ultimately materializes in practice, with the mechanism of social
contagion (to be detailed in a later section) providing the vector through which individual-
level brain states can be realized as collective-level behavior.
In the remainder of the paper, I outline the opposing domains hypothesis of neural network
functioning, specifically the differential and antagonistic relationship between an individual
brain’s task-positive and default mode networks, the differential behavioral outputs produced
by the activation of these networks, and the ramifications this understanding of the brain has
for the ethical and normative considerations underlying CSR policy formulation and imple-
mentation at the macro level.

The Opposing Domains Hypothesis

The opposing domains hypothesis (Jack et al. 2013a, b) holds that there is a neurally
antagonistic relationship between the brain’s task-positive network (TPN) and default mode
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network (DMN).The TPN is a co-ordinated network of brain regions (notably the insular
cortex, dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal regions, insular cortex and supplementary
motor area) which are activated in response to stimuli with task-based and focused attentional
demands. The spatial extent of this network overlaps the dorsal attentional system and the
frontoparietal control system, and recruits a number of brain regions implicated in logical
reasoning, mathematical reasoning, general problem solving and mechanical reasoning tasks.
The TPN is anti-correlated with (i.e. independent and suppressive of) the DMN; comprising
many of the brain’s midline regions, including the posterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal
cortex, and discrete regions of the medial temporal and dorsal medial subsystems. This
network has been implicated in a range of cognitive function, including Theory of Mind,
autobiographical memory, self-referential and counterfactual thinking, and, most topically,
social evaluation and categorization (Anticevic et al. 2012; Jack et al. 2013a; Uddin et al.
2009). Although the regions which aggregate in total DMN functioning often co-engage as a
unit, there is also evidence for functional specialization for each region. In particular, a number
of these midline regions are individually recruited when people attribute personhood and
internal mental states to others.
According to the opposing domains hypothesis, these two networks antagonistically and
reciprocally inhibit one another, such that activation of one network usually results in
deactivation of the other. Jack et al. (2013a) demonstrated that analytical tasks deactivated
brain regions associated with social reasoning, and likewise social reasoning tasks deactivated
regions associated with analytical reasoning. Furthermore, both regions remained anti-
correlated at rest, and reciprocal suppression was not explained by locus of attention, task
constraints, self-referential processing, or other factors. The behavior one ultimately engages in
as a result of either DMN or TPN activation is a result of a competitive relationship in
functional connectivity between the two networks (Kelly et al. 2008), such that they jostle
for the inputs provided by attention, working memory and other cognitive systems which
provide the informational substrate from which all neural network activity proceeds. For a
fuller treatment of the mechanisms underlying the relationship between neural activity and
behavior, including the most recent relevant supportive work in neurobiology, see Mišić and
Sporns (2016). For present purposes, it should be sufficient to note that the pathways
undergirding the connection between brain activity and its various behavioral manifestations
is the basis of a vast literature across the cognitive sciences.
With regard to mentalizing, the process through which we make inferences about the
subjective states of ourselves and others through personal phenomenology, there is a clear
distinction, additionally consistent with the opposing domains hypothesis, between the TPN
and DMN, both in terms of spatial location in the brain, and the tasks, experiences and other
cues which variably recruit each network, such that the system deployed by the brain to engage
in mentalizing substantially overlaps with the DMN. This system is separate from that of the
brain’s mirror neuron system, which exhibits significant functional overlap with the TPN.
While commonly understood as the system which underlies interpersonal empathy among
people, the mirror neuron system is, in fact, most reliably engaged through the performance of
tasks involving the performance or observation of transitive actions; absent any salient social
context and often solely anchored to the witnessing of an individual performance of some
physical action (such as moving an appendage). Contrastingly, the mentalizing system is
engaged when performing tasks based in a qualitatively richer social context; particularly
those which prompt participants to imagine or try to adopt the phenomenology of other people
- their feelings, experiences, propositional beliefs and emotional states (Jack 2014a, b).
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Relationship to the Mind-Body Problem

The mind-body problem is the basis of an expansive literature and ongoing scholarly conver-
sation within philosophy (see Westphal 2016 for a comprehensive review of the current state of
the literature), as well as a continuing source of inspiration for a considerable amount of
empirical work across the cognitive sciences (see Bunge 2014 for an overview of empirical
findings and nascent theoretical developments in psychobiologically-grounded approaches to
the mind-body problem). While a detailed assessment of the various philosophical positions
governing the debate around the mind-body problem is beyond the scope of the present paper,
it warrants mentioning that the opposing domains hypothesis might provide a source of novel
insight in this area.
As philosophical concerns surrounding the mind-body problem become more nuanced – a
development reflective, at least in part, of an increasing interface between philosophy and
neuroscience in this area – a somewhat unfortunate irony has emerged, such that a more
refined understanding of the mechanisms underlying neural function has produced a greater
explanatory gap between human neurology and phenomenology, in turn deepening the
difficulty in closing this schism. However, the opposing domains hypothesis provides a lens
through which this quandary might be traversed without the necessity of committing to either
pure reductionism, property dualism, or any other position which has been adopted by
philosophers in engaging the mind-body problem. Namely, the ability to toggle between the
TPN and the DMN as prompted by the context demands of the domain in question, which is
characteristic of healthy mental function generally (Andrews-Hanna 2012) and which also
governs one’s capacity for emotional intelligence (Takeuchi et al. 2013), illustrates both the
capacity of the human brain to use analytic reasoning to make sense of the properties of
phenomenal experience, and provides an account of the physical mechanism in human neural
architecture that is used to generate the same phenomenal experience.
This dynamic process of network toggling forms the basis of what has been termed the
phenomenal stance (see Jack and Robbins 2012); the physical capacity of an individual to
apprehend the experiential states of themselves and others. In this view, the explanatory gap
presented by the mind-body problem, such that it is, is not an objective feature of the world,
but is, rather, a reflection of the inner workings of the mind. Because the TPN and DMN are
anticorrelated (including, importantly, at rest), the mind-body problem’s apparent irreconcil-
ability is simply a result of differentially-purposed brain networks attempting to make sense of
the nature of consciousness in what is, physiologically speaking, a rapid, dynamic process of
network-switching happening below the threshold of conscious awareness, but what feels
experientially like a seamless, singular instantiation of cognition (Jack 2014a, b).
This angle on the mind-body problem does not, of course, settle what will likely be a
persistent question in the philosophical literature. It might, however, shine some light on the
relationship between neural activities and their behavioral manifestations with respect to
differential activation of the TPN and DMN. Specifically, the opposing domains hypothesis
provides an account of why one might behave in an instrumentalistic manner toward another
human being despite possessing a potentially rich, empathically-generated understanding of
their experiential identity (Hardy and Carlo 2005). The transient inability (or, outwardly, one’s
seeming unwillingness) to accord personhood to another when so warranted may simply
reflect one’s occupation of a contextually-inappropriate mental state during a back-and-forth
networking toggling process. This consideration has particular implications for the phenom-
enon of dehumanization, outlined in the following section.
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Dehumanization

Of perhaps most significance for evaluating the ethical and practical dimensions of CSR, as
well as the relationship between neural activity and its subsequent behavioral ouputs, Jack
et al. (2013b) demonstrated that key regions of the TPN are activated (and the DMN
deactivated) when participants are induced to dehumanize others (that is, to instrumentally
view them as robotic, animalistic, or otherwise lacking a sense of personhood). This mirrors
the work of Bagozzi et al. (2013), who showed that similar neural patterns are evinced by
individuals inclined toward Bsocial conduct that involves manipulating others for personal
gain" (1761), and who reduce social reasoning to a highly instrumental form, based on a lack
of genuine empathy (for which empathic reasoning is associated with activation of the DMN).
Evidence also suggests that even transiently recruiting the TPN in the performance of everyday
quantitative reasoning tasks can subsequently reduce prosocial behaviors and empathic con-
cern (Small et al. 2007; Zhong 2011). Consequently, individuals engaged in what may seem
like the ordinary performative dimensions of a job may in turn experience unanticipated
deficits in interpersonal empathy; an especially relevant consideration for business ethics given
that diminished empathic concern is a necessary antecedent of antisocial cognition, including
the propensity to dehumanize other people. Christoff (2014) and Rochford et al. (2017)
additionally provide comprehensive reviews detailing the complexities of the opposing do-
mains hypothesis, and the implications these have for ethical leadership; particularly with
respect to the potential interference wrought upon empathic or pro-social behaviors as a result
of engaging in purely analytic or mechanistic reasoning.

The Relevance of the Opposing Domains Hypothesis to Corporate Social

Responsibility

The emerging field of organizational neuroscience, and related subfields such as organizational
neuroethics, have increasingly synthesized many of the findings in social, cognitive and affective
neuroscience with work from fields such as organizational behavior, industrial-organizational
psychology and business ethics (Becker et al. 2011; Robertson et al. 2017). This emerging
interdisciplinary approach has sought to establish substantive linkages between our underlying
brain biology, and the downstream effects that it can produce on human behavior in the organi-
zational realm. While the methodology of neuroscience is based on empirical enquiry, the evidence
amassed from neuroimaging studies can produce important normative and ethical questions about
human agency and responsibility at multiple levels of analysis; including that of the organization.
At the same time, it is important to recognize that while this developing field shows exceptional
promise in terms of its ability to inform scholarship in business ethics, it is a nascent area of inquiry,
with a number of methodological, theoretical and ethical objections surrounding its current usage
(see e.g. Farah et al. 2014; Rachul and Zarzeczny 2012 for commentary). While such disagree-
ments continue to unfold in the scholarly conversation, it is still reasonable to argue that
neuroscience perspectives have significant potential for expanding our understanding as to how
ethical decision making operates below the threshold of consciousness, and what implications the
various subconscious biases which dynamically influence human behavior might have for ethical
features of organizational life.
Given what has been outlined in the foregoing section with respect to the opposing domains
hypothesis, and particularly the scope for dehumanization inherent in a misalignment between
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the neural correlates of social and instrumental reasoning, I argue that using an organizational
neuroscience perspective to examine the ethical dimensions of CSR may yield insights into the
persistent issues bedeviling researchers and practitioners alike. If, as observed by a number of
the scholars mentioned earlier (e.g. Devinney 2009; Du et al. 2010), the structural realities of
the prevalent economic landscape persist, then corporate strategies will ultimately, when push
proverbially comes to shove, be aligned with utilitarian concerns of increasing shareholder
value and return on capital. If such claims are true, it would appear difficult to reconcile CSR
initiatives with a genuine empathy for, and recognition of the collective personhood of, the
very people that constitute the Bsocial^ entity that the corporation is Bresponsible^ to. If
corporations do not exist to engender empathy, particularly if such an approach is at odds
with profit-maximization or other performance-contingent concerns, then consequently, irre-
spective of whether or not any individual CSR initiative happens to serve some suitably
delineated social end, the people that comprise that very end will, as a matter of function and
necessity, be viewed through an instrumental lens: their humanness essentially subordinated to
bottom line considerations predicated on utility value from analytically-derived metrics.
I submit that this instrumental view of people as effectively means and subjugates to organi-
zational ends, which is inherent in CSR as it is currently conceptualized, reflects a TPN-based
mode of social reasoning which will inevitably result in instrumentalist, and potentially
dehumanizing, behaviors. Rather than viewing people as inherently valuable as a matter of
deontological bedrock (a proposition contingent on DMN activation, and associated necessary
levels of empathic concern) – and attributing to them a sense of identity drawn from the multiplicity
of states we share with them (particularly emotional states; Gallese 2003) – CSR, at least as it is
currently practiced, necessitates widespread activation of the TPN and, consequently, poses
significant implications for the potential creep of dehumanization in corporate activity. Further-
more, compared to the laboratory-appropriate sample size used by the likes of Jack et al. (2013b),
this dehumanizing effect, when sufficient numbers of organizational members adhere to an
instrumentalist approach to CSR, could be extrapolated across the span of an entire corporate
entity through the transmission medium of social contagion - the phenomenon of having aspects of
human cognition and affect in one individual trigger or elicit similar cognitive or affective
responses in other individuals around them (Christakis and Fowler 2013). Indeed, unethical
behavior has been empirically demonstrate to amplify in both frequency and application as a
function of the social network in which one is embedded (Gino et al. 2009). Taken together, this
has the potential for a cavalcade of disastrous downstream dehumanizing effects to be unleashed
on any number of vulnerable stakeholders in an affected social group.
I propose, consistent with Devinney (2009), that the very makeup of corporations – their
raison d’être and underlying motivational architecture – is antithetical to DMN-based social
and ethical reasoning, and the interpersonal empathy inherent in it, and demands sustained
TPN activation on a global scale; thus massively increasing the scope for dehumanization and
calling the ethical leadership dimensions of CSR into question. If CSR initiatives are to be
truly socially responsible, and mitigating of the gravest threats of dehumanization at the
organizational level (Christoff 2014), then the fundamental operating principles upon which
it is scaffolded must be squarely based on a non-instrumentalist understanding of people in the
social realm. The prioritization of firm-level performance objectives as the ultimate arbiter of
whether or not CSR initiatives are pursued or, if pursued, deemed successful, is profoundly
irreconcilable with this position. Such reasoning privileges mechanistic problem solving over
socio-emotional problem solving, in the process taking an implicit normative stance as to the
relative value of both.
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Implications for CSR Practitioners and Scholars

Those making decisions of any consequence in organizations are often faced with the reality that
their actions may result in the harm of others. The difficulty in making such decisions arises from
the moral dilemmas they present, and necessitates using the full complement of one’s emotional
faculties to frame them in ethically salient terms. Instrumentalizing and dehumanizing those who
would inherit the deleterious outcomes of CSR policy enactments might reduce the moral burden
for such decision makers, but this, of course, poses any number of grave ethical concerns. While it
seems a remote possibility that CSR would ever be overhauled in such a way as to move away
from the prevailing corporate orthodoxy in this domain and toward a more humanistic conception
of its practices, efforts should nevertheless be made to bring the unethical potential of CSR
practices and protocols into the limelight, and begin applying appropriate scholarly pressure to
the notion that CSR is valuable at all, much less socially responsible.
Quite what organizations can do to offset the ethically questionable aspects of their CSR
initiatives, particularly those organizations built on a preponderance of task-oriented, analytical
thinking, and thus intrinsic TPN dominance, remains an open question; one that has, to date,
received scant empirical attention. Nonetheless, several promising related lines of research
might lay the foundations for future efforts in this area. Wang et al. (2014), for example, have
shown that a number of antisocial sentiments and behaviors that can be induced through
analytic task demands can be reduced by merely exposing participants to stimuli related to
social, community and family values. When one considers that organizations which practice
highly involved forms of community engagement - whereby the organization directly inter-
faces and collaborates with stakeholders whose well-being might be affected by the organiza-
tion’s practices - are those that tend to develop a greater potential for positive organizational
impact on their communities (Bowen et al. 2010), it seems reasonable to deduce that such
purposive acts of community engagement across the decision-making echelons of an organi-
zation might also reduce collective TPN activation, and the potential for antisocial outcomes
such as dehumanization. In essence, the deliberate exposure of those making ethical decisions
in organizations, including those related to CSR practices, to the palpable and visceral
humanness of those whom such decisions impact upon, might reduce the tendency of such
decision-makers to subordinate CSR decisions to instrumental organizational concerns.
Other research has demonstrated that sustained DMN activation is positively associated
with openness to novel possibilities and a eudaimonic sense of wellbeing (Kringelbach and
Berridge 2009). This stands in contrast to the Bhedonic pricing of virtues and vices^ alluded to
in the opening quote (Devinney 2009:53), which more accurately characterizes much of the
reasoning endemic to the current organizational landscape. The upshot here is that purpose-
fully seeking out modalities through which ethical decision-makers in organizations might
engage their DMNs may facilitate an enhanced capacity to Bthink outside the box^; perhaps, in
the process, shifting organizational priorities away from a narrowly focused emphasis on
organizational performance and processes and toward a more generative and visionary con-
ception of organizational success contingent on wider social well-being. Practices such as
mindfulness, meditation training, spending time with loved ones and in nature, and imagining
a positive vision of one’s future, have all variously been shown to engage the DMN (Boyatzis
et al. 2014; Josipovic et al. 2012), and leadership development protocols which avail them-
selves of such findings might profitably contribute toward a repurposing of CSR initiatives and
other socially relevant organizational policies, as well as a reframing of the underlying
motivations behind related decision making processes.
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Moreover, the phenomenon of social contagion outlined earlier has implications for the
degree to which moral behavior – good and bad alike – is transmitted across individuals as a
function of the group (MacKenzie et al. 2011). To the degree that any of the DMN-engaging
protocols and modalities outlined above are effective and enduring, they are more likely to be
so when subscribed to across as wide and influential a collective as possible. Social contagion
provides a pathway – one firmly grounded in the underlying architectures of human psychol-
ogy and neurology – to facilitate such broad group uptake.
Despite the promise offered by research in this area, and its potential to be extrapolated to the
organizational level (see Singer 2016), a vigilant skepticism is warranted as to whether this would
likely change anything of substance with regard to the prevailing utilitarian conception of CSR. As
long as the survival and prosperity of the organization ultimately remains the dealbreaking
consideration of CSR, any efforts to embed a more DMN-centered approach to its implementation
by organizational decision-makers will likely be doomed to fail. Devinney’s observation that Bthe
socially responsible corporation is a fundamental impossibility^ (2009:53), might prove correct not
only as a matter of practical business reality, but also of neurological (and subsequently behavioral)
reality. In the meantime, a less fatalistic approach to addressing this proposition should continue to
utilize all the available tools of neuroscience in order to shape as informed an understanding as
possible of the ethical dimensions of CSR at the level of the brain.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of Interest The author(s) whose name(s) is/are listed in this manuscript certify that they have NO
affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria;
educational grants; participation in speakers’ bureaus; membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership,
or other equity interest; and expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements), or non-financial interest (such as
personal or professional relationships, affi liations, knowledge or beliefs) in the subject matter or materials
discussed in this manuscript.

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Gareth Craze is a doctoral student in the department of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve
University. A native of New Zealand, he received his Bachelors in Management & Employment Relations and
his Masters in Management from The University of Auckland. Gareth’s research interests centre on the nexus
between evolutionary theory, business philosophy and cognitive science, with his general focus being the
exploration of avenues through which aspects of human biology can inform cognitive and affective aspects of
organizational life, including ethical leadership. He is currently working in the CWRU Brain, Mind and
Consciousness lab on a research project which seeks to link the opposing domains hypothesis to executive
coaching and leadership development.