CSR, ESG, and Financial Cosmopolitanism: Bank constructions of responsibility


Mark Hudson, University of Manitoba; Shayne St. Denis, University of Manitoba

This paper situates the cosmopolitan constructions of transnational banks within the longer history of corporate contestation over “social responsibility.” Swinging back and forth between highly restrictive and more expansive understandings of corporate responsibility, banks—as key, perhaps even hegemonic, members of capitalist policy networks—actively engage with questions about who they are responsible to, and for what. Through a critical content analysis of documentation from 5 transnational banks, the paper characterizes banks’ ongoing settlement of their own cosmopolitan responsibilities, and places it in this longer historical context.

This paper will be presented at the following session: