Responsibility-Governance Grid: Mapping CSR Tensions

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility is not fixed. It is a field where economic aims, social expectations and regulatory gaps meet and where tension is the rule, not the exception. Concepts like ESG and Corporate Citizenship may promise clarity, but often mask how fragile the balance really is. This paper applies a theoretical, systematising approach based on a hermeneutic review of internationally recognised literature to make these tensions visible. By revisiting four established clusters, instrumental, political, integrative and ethical, the paper shows how companies navigate overlapping roles. Sustainability can strengthen performance, but only when it rests on transparent structures and clear limits. Where firms step in for absent regulators, they assume responsibilities that reach beyond market logic yet remain contested without broader legitimacy. To map these tensions, the paper introduces the Responsibility Governance Grid, an orientation framework that locates CSR clusters along two axes: degree of obligation and source of legitimacy. This grid illustrates how clusters shift when firms move between voluntary standards and regulatory expectations or between internal commitment and public accountability. The analysis underlines that governance worth its name must tolerate friction. Responsibility that survives more than one reporting cycle depends on binding rules, openness to contradiction and the courage to negotiate trade-offs. There is no universal model; there are only arrangements that reveal where governance holds and where it fails. Rather than closing the debate, this paper holds it open. It offers a starting point for those who see CSR not as a polished promise but as an ongoing task that resists easy closure and gains its relevance precisely from that