[submitted in a panel proposal] This paper analyses Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a new form of societal governance. By reviewing CSR typologies in the management literature and enriching them with political science research on regulation and governance, CSR is analysed as an aggregate of different types of regulation by businesses, government and civil society. In a first step, it is shown that CSR is constituted by three forms of business self-regulation and three types of co-regulation, all six located within the domain of businesses. In a second step, the paper adds that hard and soft regulation by governments and civil regulation through civil society shape CSR from a distance. By showing how these different types of regulation constitute or shape CSR, its role in contemporary governance becomes evident. Finally, the paper stands back from particular types of regulation and portrays “four political faces of CSR”.
