Abstract:
The concept of social responsibility gained a corporate structure in the second half of
the 1900s. Corporate social responsibility projects, which find their place both in the
world and in Turkey, are embodied by companies' projects to solve social and
environmental problems. These projects seem to contradict the nature of capitalism,
mainly because they are the product of moral concerns. However, capitalist logic is
driven by economic concerns rather than moral values. For this reason, corporate social
responsibility can become a tool of economic actors acting for profit maximization.
Instrumentalization theory, one of the theories of corporate social responsibility,
emphasizes this aspect of capitalism. According to this theory, the primary responsibility
of a company is to maximize the profits of its shareholders. The instrumentalization
theory, also known as the "Friedman Doctrine", is frequently encountered in corporate
social responsibility projects. In this study, it is claimed that some environment-oriented
corporate cooperation projects in Turkey act in harmony with the instrumentalization
theory. According to the findings of the article, corporate social responsibility is
instrumentalized with environment-oriented corporate cooperation projects. In
particular, the institutional collaborations of TEMA and WWF Turkey foundations with
capitalist circles provide evidence that the logic of instrumentalization is clearly
revealed through social responsibility projects.
