Can Ordoliberalism Save the World? CSR/ESG and the ‘right’ boundary between public good and private interest

Department of Law & Tax

Speaker : Mathias Siems (EUI)

Room S-122

Abstract:

The debate about corporations’ social and environmental responsibility is fundamentally a debate about the right place for the boundary between the public and the private do-mains. Prior research on this topic has started paying attention to the diversity in relation-ships between the state and corporations. Yet, this literature does not provide any clear normative criterion on the societally most desirable configuration for tools of CSR and ESG. Drawing on ordoliberalism, we seek to remedy this shortcoming. We discuss the main tenants of ordoliberalism and investigate what implications these have for the role of private interests in the economy and the responsibility of corporations toward the pub-lic good. We find that ordoliberalism provides some support for responsibility beyond the profit motive, but also that it would argue in favour of a configuration where companies only take on social and environmental roles that the state cannot otherwise fulfil (‘reverse subsidiarity’).