Conceptualizing data‐deliberation: The starry sky beetle, environmental system risk, and Habermasian CSR in the digital age

• Published date: 01 April 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12256
• Author: Mario D. Schultz,Peter Seele
• Date: 01 April 2020

Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2020;29:303–313. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer  

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  303© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

1 | INTRODUCTION

In recent years, d ebates on the pol itical under standings of co r-

porations have en riched existi ng research on Co rporate Social

Responsibilit y (CSR). Polit ical CSR (PC SR) theory h as thereby evolved

with several aut hors stressi ng the need to expa nd the politic al un-

derstand ings of corporations an d their social responsib ilities (Frynas

& Stephens, 2015; Mäk inen & Kourula, 2012; M ellahi, Fryna s, Sun,

& Siegel, 2016; Schere r, Rasche, Palazzo, & Spi cer, 2016; Whelan,

2012). Corporat ions can have var ying politica l impacts, w hich may

stem from diver se political ideals and diff erent political contexts in

which corpora tions operate (Fr ynas & Stephens, 2 015; Mäkinen &

Kourula, 2012; Whe lan, 2012). Two broad strea ms of PCSR litera-

ture (see, e.g., M ellahi et al., 2016; Rao-N icholson, Khan, & M arinova,

2019) deal with the polit ical underst andings of corpo rations: (a) when

it comes to corpor ate conduct under cha llenging politica l conditions,

when the governme nt is limited in reac h and corporati ons act po-

litical by contr ibuting to, for example, the prov ision of public goods

or avoidance of publi c bad (Ingenhoff & M arschlich, 2019; Sch erer,

2018; Westermann-B ehaylo, Rehbein , & Fort, 2015); and (b) w hen

corporation s act politically, by eng aging in political pr ocesses to seek

favorable regulatory outcomes (Anastasiadis, Moon, & Humphreys,

2018; Lock & Seele, 2016, 2 018).

This study ex tends the scope of P CSR literatu re, by explor-

ing whether cor porations have pote ntial politic al responsibil-

ities (beyond responsible lobbying) regarding public goods, in

contexts fun ctioning govern ments. The fo cus is thereby set on

recent digital t ransformati ons that are changi ng business con-

duct and the po litical impac ts and respo nsibilities tha t firms can

have. Consequen tly, we outline that new p ossibilities in te rms of

Received: 23 Febr uary 2018 

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  Revised: 25 Octo ber 2019 

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  Accepted: 4 Novemb er 2019

DOI: 10.1111/beer.12256

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Conceptualizing data-deliberation: The starry sky beetle,

environmental system risk, and Habermasian CSR in the digital

age

Mario D. Schultz  | Peter Seele

Faculty of Comm unication Scien ces,

Corporate S ocial Responsibil ity and Business

Ethics, Università della Svizzera italiana

(USI), Lugano, Switzerland

Correspondence

Mario D. Schultz, Faculty of Communication

Sciences, Corporate Social Responsibility

and Business Ethics, Università della

Svizzera ita liana (USI), Via Buf fi 13, 6900

Lugano, Switzerland.

Email: mario.schultz@usi.ch

Building on an illust rative case of a syste mic environmental th reat and its multi-

stakeholder res ponse, this paper dr aws attention to the cha nging political imp acts

of corporations in the d igital age. Politica l Corporate Social Res ponsibility (PC SR)

theory sugge sts an expande d sense of politics and co rporations, incl uding impacts

that may range from volunt ary initiatives to over come governance gaps, to avoid-

ing state regulation v ia corporate politic al activit y. Considering digitalizat ion as a

stimulus, we explo re potential responsib ilities of corporatio ns toward public goods

in contexts with f unctioning governme nts. We show that digitaliz ation—in the form

of transparency, surveillance, and data-sharing—offers corporations’ scope for delib-

erative public participation. The starry sky beetle infestation endangering public and

private goods is there by used to illustrate th e possibility of expan ding the politica l

role of corporations in t he digital sphere. We offer a contributio n by conceptualizing

data-deliberat ion as a Habermasian var iation of PCSR, d efined as the (a) voluntar y

disclosure of corporate d ata and its transparent, open s haring with the public sector

(b) along with the coope ration with governmental inst itutions on data analyt ics meth-

ods for examining lar ge-scale dataset s (c) thereby complying wit h existing national

and international reg ulations on data protection, in pa rticular with respect to pr ivacy

and personal data.