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Limited engagement
Philanthropy may involve some degree of alignment of charitable activities with social issues 
that support business objectives, although some charitable giving may be about ‘doing good’ 
rather than meeting business goals. However, even at the level of corporate giving to good 
causes, companies are increasingly choosing projects in which they can be actively involved 
and that encompass parts of their business model. This concept of ‘strategic philanthropy’ 
is gathering momentum alongside the idea of ‘capitalist philanthropy’, which suggests that 
charitable giving should be evaluated as an investment (Brewster, 2008).
Defensive approaches
If a firm is essentially defensive in its stance to social responsiveness, then its primary con-
cerns with CSR will be the protection of relationships – for example, with consumers, 
business-to-business customers, influential lobby or pressure groups, suppliers, employees 
and managers, and relative position against competitors.
For example, when Greenpeace parodied Unilever advertisements, accusing the company 
of destroying Indonesian rainforests for palm oil (a key ingredient of the company’s soaps 
and margarines), the company was quick to reverse its position and declare it would buy 
palm oil only from suppliers who can demonstrate they did not cut down forestry. As the 
world’s largest seller of bottled water, Nestlé’s response to environmental criticisms was 
more negative – they responded with a large advertising campaign linking soft drinks to 
obesity (Patrick, 2008).
Strategic moves
The underlying logic with more strategic approaches is that CSR provides a new growth 
platform, potentially bringing access to new markets, new partnerships and new types of 
product/service innovation that generate value – this represents a shift from compliance and 
defensiveness to integrating CSR into strategy to achieve revenue growth and brand differ-
entiation (Pohle and Hittner, 2008). Increasingly, such strategic moves involve partnerships 
with non-government organisations (NGOs) to combine social and commercial activities. 
For example, Unilever has partnered with public health networks in Africa to promote its 
anti-bacterial Lifebuoy soap – the NGOs seek to promote handwashing to prevent the spread 
of disease, while Unilever aims to sell more soap (Jopson, 2007).