Abstract

This article investigates what it means for corporate social responsibility (CSR) to be “mainstreamed” in a company. Rather than a single ‘best practice,’ narratives provided by managers revealed that mainstreaming can be understood in terms of three distinct CSR orientations: the business-case model, the syncretic stewardship model, and the social values-led model. These different orientations and approaches to mainstreaming CSR are the result of three inter-related factors: an “external market for virtue,” an “internal market for virtue,” and the established culture of the company. For business case and social values-led firms, incentives can be developed that encourage them to gravitate toward the syncretic stewardship orientation, which may well represent the most sustainable dimension of CSR.