Invited talk to Faculty and Ph.d students for a research colloquium at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California Irvine. http://merage.uci.edu/Faculty/ResearchColloquia/index.aspx on January 9, 2014.

Basic assumptions about the nature of corporate-stakeholder relations for defining Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are coming into question with recent work, such as Ramaswamy’s (2008) call for de-centering the firm and democratizing the focus for defining and creating value, Strand & Freeman’s (2012) paper investigating the Scandinavian origins of stakeholder models demonstrating stakeholder models from the 1960s that blurred boundaries between corporations and society, and Werhane’s (2011) analysis of dynamic and de-centered stakeholder models. This talk looks at assumptions inherent in key stakeholder models and uses the social media activism cases to further develop those models for understanding corporate stakeholder relations in a globalized context influenced by social media. Understanding and listening to activism offers corporations a means of assessing their alignment with surrounding social contexts, and reflecting on their understanding of stakeholder-corporate relations from a perspective based in public awareness and concern about the consequences of their CSR strategies. Examining CSR from the outside-in challenges a corporate centered perspective on CSR. This talk takes a point of departure in efforts from activists to engage in a process of (re)defining CSR by communicating with corporations via social media. The value of an approach from activist point of view is to help corporations expand their understanding of CSR related issues by including CSR-focused communication from activists as a learning opportunity at the interface between business and society.