Philanthropic forms of corporate social responsibility practices in a multinational company: Colonial and post-colonial perspectives

This paper explores how colonial and post-colonial philanthropic ideals shape a multinational shoe manufacturing company's corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. We conducted a qualitative field study in Bangladesh, analysing semi-structured interviews and archival documents. The findings revealed significant and distinct variations in social, institutional, and political relationships across three historical periods: colonisation, state despotism, and capital imperialism. Notably, benevolence, elitism, socialist enterprise paternalism, and institutionalised strategic philanthropy ideals were found to dominate firm-level CSR practices. These findings suggest that colonial and post-colonial contexts can shape and ideologically frame philanthropic forms of CSR practices in organisations over time.