Vastuutonta puhetta? : Esseitä talouden merkityksellistämisestä

The field of business and society studies has undergone significant changes in the past few decades as the original focus on social and political critique has given way to instrumentalist and moral philosophic perspectives on business-society relations. This study aims to contribute to the project of repoliticizing the study of business-society relations. To achieve this aim, it analyses economic activity from a discourse theoretical perspective as an object of discursive struggle and social responsibility as an element of this struggle. More specifically, the study asks whether and how the notion of (social) responsibility is evoked as a relevant aspect of economic activity in different arenas of public discussion and debate. This question is motivated by the assumption that the cultural meanings of economic activity, and the signifying practices through which these meanings are produced and maintained, are crucially linked with the ways in which responsibility is required of economic actors such as corporations, investors, and consumers and taken by them. The four essays of the dissertation study the discursive struggle over business-society relations in different institutional arenas of signification: the media, the marketplace, the public sphere, politics, and science. In the introductory chapter, the findings of the four essays are conjoined in order to depict a specific order of business-society discourses in Finland’s globalizing society. In short, the study argues that the discursive field of business and society is characterized by tension between two discourses of businesssociety relations: the economistic and the moralistic. Within the dominant economist discourse, economic activities such as investing, consumption, corporate activities, and economic policy are described and explained using a model of cost-benefit optimization and assessed against an implicit norm of ethical egoism. Here the notion of responsibility in connection with economic action is marginalized, defined in instrumental terms, or equated with efficiency. Within the moralistic discourse, however, the norm of ethical egoism is rejected and social responsibility is evoked as a relevant basis for legitimizing economic activity. This discourse moralizes the choices of individuals and organizations in the market for example by encouraging them to require and demand fair, ethical, or responsible products and services. The study argues, however, that both discourses share some significant common features. The moralistic discourse mainly resembles the economistic discourse by individualizing responsibility (or by “responsibilizing” individuals), by emphasizing the voluntary nature of responsibility, and by locating political participation in individual market behaviors. Overall, the discursive struggle over business-society relations is ordered so that it draws attention primarily to the moral premises of individual choices and especially to the tension between the norms of ethical egoism and shared responsibility. In contrast, the prevailing order of business-society discourse marginalizes the socio-political and cultural aspects of economic activity, particularly issues of power, distribution, and social justice. The empirical essays of the dissertation add to knowledge of the economy as a hegemonic discourse by specifying some of the institutionalized practices through which economistic representations and worldviews are produced, maintained, and resisted. On the one hand, the study highlights the role of certain conventionalized discursive practices such as the genre of stock market reports in the news media and the recontextualizing of economic analysis for the purposes of political decision making, as crucial sites for reproducing and naturalising economistic representations of the economy. On the other hand, it elaborates on the potential of other, emerging practices, for instance online participation and post-structuralist critical research, to enable and encourage the problematization of dominant understandings of economy and society.