Business Commons^™

Corporate Citizenship: Panacea Or Problem?, Latha Poonamallee

College of Business Publications

In this paper I examine the dilemma between being a market leader and a corporate citizen in the case of Hindustan Unilever Ltd. Grounded in secondary data collected from various published sources, I uncover the contradictions that underlie the positive picture of Hindustan Unilever's CSR activities. By drawing on corporate social responsibility and stakeholder theories, I highlight how difficult it is to categorise an organisation as solely positive or negative in its impact on its social and physical environment. I conclude by arguing that we need more sophisticated evaluative frameworks to understand and evaluate real-world initiatives in this area.