Social responsibility as organizational culture in a Brazilian mining company : a three-perspectival narrative

Based on a qualitative study carried out in 2008, I explore in this paper the multi-layered and multi-perspectival nature of the culture of corporate social responsibility (CSR) of a major Brazilian mining company. To this end I borrow Martin's (2002) meta-theoretical framework to examine this phenomenon through three different perspectives: the integration view, which emphasizes consensus; the differentiation view which exposes dissent, and the fragmentation view which reveals ambiguity. This analytic framework produces a richly detailed account of the ideational, material and communicative elements of an organizational culture of CSR, and also takes into account the role of the researcher in the construction of this narrative.