After a long period of neglect of social and political matters and due to the recent scandals championed by large corporations, the strategy area has become increasingly closer to the theme social responsibility, specially in the US, over the last ten years. A similar picture has emerged in Brazil. The authors of this article argue that this proximity should be challenged. Drawing upon a recent critical analysis of the strategy area recently undertaken by European researchers, they point out how the non-neutrality of this area, viewed as an organizational field, helps explain the Enron scandal. The lack of interest of the dominant literature on this sort of critical analysis can elucidate why important theoretical approaches to corporate social responsibility have been overlooked by the strategy literature in the globalization era. Based on an interdisciplinary historical analysis, this article shows that the current and most known approach to social responsibility and the strategy area share a common problematic guideline: the legitimation of the large corporations and the contempt for public matters an for the state. In the end the authors argue that the approximation between the strategy area and social responsibility requires the recognition of the public dimension so that social matters do not become mere strategic and political resources of large corporations.
strategy; social responsibility; critical approach
