One branch of theory identifies dialogue as a language concept situated in people’s capacity and right to communicate. For Apel ([1973] 1980 p. 425) communication is the foundational relationship people have with each other, the ‘unlimited communicative community of all rational beings (alle denkenden Wesen)’, thereby to govern their own lives and respond to the impact others have on them. Such a right to tell and be heard (inform and communicate) is not straightforward, particularly when working assumptions and dialogue conditions are very different, as between individuals and corporations. At the very least, corporations are likely to privilege their own viability and methodologies above those of individuals, groups or even communities; certainly until the evidence to the contrary is so overwhelming that change is impossible to deny and government allies to refute. For social justice campaigners, stark lessons have been learnt about how organizations (public and private) respond to community demands through dialogue, suggesting that dialogue is often employed as a valve to release social tension while the organization works against the direct interests of communities, or more particularly in its own self-interest (Korten, 1995). If dialogue is to be effective, particularly when linked to principles of self-determination by citizens and community self-governance, it has to be grounded in political and legal structures that are able to protect both the process and the outcomes of dialogue. Self-certification by large organizations hardly fits this model, and in fact can be viewed as a form of crude publicity to ensure that action is not taken and the full implications of dialogue are actually avoided.
According to the philosopher John Rawls (1972) distributive justice is the human right above all others and lies at the heart of democracy. In reality, justice is the main principle behind communication, in its deeper sense ‘the privileging of the other’ (Buber, 1947; Levinas, 1996; Christians and Traber, 1997). Benhabib (1992, p. 100) draws together dialogue and the communi- cation of justice as an underpinning concept: ‘rather public dialogue means challenging and redefining the collective good, and one’s sense of justice as a result of the public foray’. Benhabib considers the link between justice and dialogue founded on the liberal value of neutrality as insufficient to protect
the true value and role of dialogue:
The liberal principle of dialogic neutrality, while it expresses one of the main principles of the modern legal system, is too restrictive and frozen in application to the dynamics of power struggles in actual political processes. A public life, conducted according to [this] principle … would restrict the scope of the public conversation in a way which would be inimical to the interest of oppressed groups (ibid.).
Communication between citizens and corporations without coercion or manipulation is a fitting goal for CSR, ensuring justice in democratic societies by protecting free communication among citizens who are equal before the law, if not preferentially before the moral order. A crucial question is whether in its many guises corporate dialogue can be fitted into a framework of extended or extendable human rights in order to protect the principles of dialogue from legally constituted misappropriation? Rawls (1993, p. 8) defines the principle of ‘free public reason’ to enable the evalua- tion of justice in a public forum: ‘The maxim that justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done, holds good not only in law, but in free public reason.’ In these circumstances, the citizen may ask of a corporation whether its claims to be socially responsible conforms to its actions, and whether these can be judged against an ideal model that rebalances the market power and legal rights of the collective enterprise, with the often suspended rights and lack of power generally displayed by dispersed human communities.
Crucially, dialogue (and dialogic tools such as the internet) are a potential means to achieve this rebalance, although dialogue must be supported by conditions and rights that protect the participants. Rawls is credited with refining the social contract theory of society that began with the Greek sophists and was taken up by Thomas Hobbes (1651), John Locke (1693) and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1764), arguing that human rights enabled by an explicit and dynamic social contract appear to offer the firmest foundation for the construction of a shared moral order. While this accords with the oft- stated purpose of social dialogue, to support human rights, it is self-evident that the moral order underlying all human community has largely been replaced by laws that disembody moral territory and reduce the capacity of communities to protect themselves from manipulation by corporations (Habermas, 1968; Foucault, 1972; Bourdieu, 1992). By employing broad and enforceable notions of human rights to support the moral order rather than appealing to legal ends, there is a faint hope that social justice can be served. Even so, human rights should be recognized as a ‘soft’ means of directing social outcomes, while legislative frameworks, often used to protect the rights of power and wealth, are recognized as harder and more enforceable. According to Rawls (1972) human rights must conform to five
necessary conditions:
● generality
● universality
● publicity
● rightness
● finality
Still, the problem with rights-based argumentation is that in so many areas human rights lie suspended, or are subsumed in legal, regulatory and corporate powers. Participants in dialogues are in theory protected by rights laid down in the UN Charter of Human Rights in 1948. Despite the clear right to free expression, recognition before the law, self-determination and free- dom, there is still deep injustice in the treatment of citizens and systematic reduction of human rights by governments and corporations alike (Monbiot, 2000). In theory, at least, participation in social dialogue is an essential means of affecting change, with rights and responsibilities being held equally by the community of citizen actors, while institutions and corporations remain under democratic control. However, the right to engage in dialogue is a weak form of democratic participation unless those taking part recognize its bind- ing nature as part of a commitment to universal human justice. The problem with this moral argument and the practice of corporate dialogue itself, is that those with legally constituted corporate or institutional power are able to counter arguments, negate human rights and avoid moral norms to suit their own purpose. In this case the only alternative to self-justifying, legally pro- tected institutional power is morally constituted citizen power. Although hardly prioritized except as an ideal of constitutional democracy, it is citizen power that is the ultimate seat of authority in every state. Despite such a clear commitment democracy remains dull. Aristotle, in The Constitution of Athens, makes the point that democracy was even then a battleground between have and have-nots, the powerful and the powerless. In two and a half thousand years little appears to have changed (Barnes, 1984).
Corporate dialogue managers should take this analysis into consideration.
For instance, social accounting, with its claim to objectivity and neutrality (Grayet al., 1996), cannot protect dialogue from interference and manipula- tion, as no such theoretical or practical position can be maintained, at least according to post-structuralist critique and Habermasian public sphere injunctions (Foucault, 1972; Lyotard, 1979; Habermas, 1990; Bourdieu, 1992).
For social accountants and auditors, whose competence to support or protect dialogue must surely be questioned in respect of both self-interest and constitutional legitimacy, this should be troubling. The claim of social accounting to offer objective (measured) knowledge to all parties in the eval- uation of corporate social performance can be questioned as scientific dogma, promoted by commercial interests as a ‘communication token’,
offering corporations control over a measurement process that finds what it seeks and to dialogue participants a quasi-technical response to their demands that is overwhelmingly imbalanced. A number of questions are worth asking a socially responsible corporation: Do you publish the tran- scripts of your dialogue? On what terms do you employ independent facili- tators of dialogue? How does your social report address the contested questions that are part of your wider operating remit? Does your social report contain a commitment to individual participants in dialogue? The chances are that when using social accounts the powerful and wealthy remain in control of both the agenda and the resources. Public debate is not enough. Procedures of engagement must be equitable and just and corpora- tions must defer to the legitimate right of citizens to self-determination. This may require corporations to reduce their commercial interest in any community that expresses dissatisfaction with corporate involvement, or to act in other ways that secure the public interest. Such actions are difficult to determine inside the corporations itself.