Collier, William

Start date:
September 2018
Research Topic:
Corporate Governmentality
Research pathway:
Research Supervisor:
Mark Whitehead
Supervising school:
Primary funding source:
ESRC Studentship

The trend towards companies having a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agenda is growing. Companies can engage in CSR in many ways including: philanthropy, cause promotion, volunteering, behaviour change programmes ect. The focus of my research is on those behaviour change programmes that fall under the heading of CSR but that are: interventionist, in so far as they are actively seeking to change behaviour in order to manage, shape and govern behaviour; in areas that are historically the province of government – education, health care, welfare, and human rights; and finally, not primarily associated with profits (as a opposed to secondary or tertiary profit motivations). The central research question of this project is: is there evidence that the current private sector, though its use of the unique type of CSR initiatives described above, can be considered a deliberate corporate governmentality project?