Tackling the Responsibility of International Business and Enterprises as a transnational Cause

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Dmitri van den Bersselaar; Dr. Marie Huber
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; Political Science
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 567405486

Expectations from different categories of actors that businesses and especially multinational enterprises should be “responsible” have become increasingly widespread. Whether promoted or attacked, Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR has become a buzzword attached to very different meanings yet also constituting the “elephant in the room” of a new promising research agenda for the years to come. Whereas lots of research has already focused on the impact and efficiency of CSR by global companies, we lack an in-depth, socio-historical analysis of the way “responsibility” has become widespread to frame the relationships between business, labour, state and other civil society actors. The TRIBECA project aims to 1. elaborate a social and political history of business responsibility 2. provide a multi-level and transnational study and 3. map a global network of business responsibility entrepreneurs. We suggest that problematizing responsibility as a transnational cause constructed over the 20th-21st centuries by a variety of coalitions of actors provides new venues to explain the popularization as well as contestation of CSR related discourses and practices. Using a multisited approach and case studies across the globe and over the 20th and 21st century, this project offers an original set of hypotheses combining qualitative and quantitative methods. The project relies upon four main hypotheses: 1. The category of business responsibility is anchored in Christian moral and religious values and networks 2. Business interests are heterogeneous and non-transparent 3. Mobilisation in the (post-)colonial development context by state and private interests has been key for bringing responsibility of business on the transnational agenda 4. Public-private alliances are crucial in the success but also for the dilution of the category of business responsibility. An interdisciplinary team of historians, sociologists and political scientists will work in archives of multinational corporations, international organisations and NGOs, conduct ethnographic fieldwork within key international CSR programmes will carry out this project and build a collaborative database. This will enable a wide-encompassing, unprecedented analysis of the topic of business responsibility.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, Switzerland
• Partner Organisation: Agence Nationale de la Recherche / The French National Research Agency
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Tristan Oestermann
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Laure Bereni; Professorin Dr. Sandrine Kott; Professorin Dr. Marieke Louis