CSR_MEMORY · Corporate (ir)responsibility and the politics of collective memory.

Corporate (ir)responsibility and the politics of collective memory.

The aim of this project has been to provide understanding on why and how we as societies often forget instances of corporate irresponsibility over time, and thus fail to hold firms accountable over the long term, and expose ourselves to recurring trauma. The investigation was conducted through a longitudinal (2000-2016) case study of media discourses regarding the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which had been embroiled in several scandals beginning with the 2008 financial crisis. Two supporting smaller case studies were utilized to produce the results. The primary conclusion of the project is that instances of corporate tend to be forgotten from collective memory on a societal level under most circumstances (the exception being when the primary audience is unusually strongly invested into the issue) for two main reasons. The first one is that the organizations in question are skilled and effective at disseminating narratives about events concerning themselves, and put forward simplistic narratives that place the blame the blame somewhere outside of the organization, spatially or temporally. In the case of RBS, the firm continued to refer the sources of all of its scandals over time to the tenure of their previous CEO who has not been with the company since the financial crisis begun. This has had two effects, both of which have broader implications: 1) this simple narrative crowded out other possible explanations for their scandals, along with their part in the financial crisis itself, and 2) each of the scandals were left out of public discourse rather quickly as they had been seemingly resolved. This confirms suggestions of previous studies that over the long-term, stakeholder attention on corporate irresponsibility is unreliable and tends to be weak. The second reason is that current general mood and the normative environment (i.e. the cultural framework, or the ‘zeitgeist’) fluctuates over time, sometimes very rapidly, such as following the financial crisis and how investment banks were generally perceived before and after the crisis, and this cultural framework determines what is normal and important in society. As what is considered important shifts, issues that were considered important before may become less important, and are thus forgotten, or memories of them are connected to what is considered important in the present. Thus in the case of RBS, after the financial crisis, the firm came to be vilified for the very same activities that it had been lauded for before the financial crisis. In other words, its activities that had been considered responsible before, became viewed as irresponsible in the eyes of the general public. This shows how the general cultural framework to a considerable extent determines the ways in which past activities are remembered, and sets boundaries for what types of narratives firms may credibly propagate regarding their past activities.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз