Businesses, Activists, and the Quest for Legitimacy

This editorial examines how corporate practices have evolved to address social and environmental concerns. In addition to the division of labor between business historians and historians of social movements, we identify two key challenges to be addressed when conducting research on efforts to change corporate behavior. The first challenge relates to the source material related to interactions in these fields. Such material is often difficult to access and can tend to distort the impact of attempts to instigate change, sometimes in a deliberate manner. Secondly, these efforts have diverse goals, ranging from altering individual companies to transforming international economic systems. Faced with such challenges, the contributions to this theme issue highlight the value of case studies focusing on interactions that are aimed at changing businesses. Above all, they pose the question of who can be considered an “activist”. Efforts to change businesses have been initiated by a wide range of actors, including non-governmental organizations, trade unions, philanthropists, impact entrepreneurs, and consultants. Rather than accepting a simple dichotomy between businesses and activists, we explore different iterations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) that have emerged since the second half of the 19th century. This editorial identifies changes in the emphasis on social and environmental issues as well as the emergence of different actors considered responsible for enacting desired behaviors and different means through which these goals are pursued. The process of enacting new business practices is thus intrinsically tied to struggles between actors seeking the necessary level of legitimacy to define what constitutes corporate social responsability.