Hugo Letiche, Ivo de Loo, Jean-Luc Moriceau. Figures of reactive triumph: CSR responding to the pandemic. Assessing Corporate Social Performance : 2nd edition of the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMASS) – EM Normandie (EMN) Business School Research Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), University of Massachusetts Boston (UMASS); EM Normandie (EMN) Business School, Jun 2021, Rouen (Online conference), France.

The Covid-19 pandemic has provided extensional definition of CSR: ‘Who did what?’. Geriatria, a for-profit Dutch medical service provider to nursing and elderly care homes, is our research object. When the Covid emergency turned fatal for the infirm elderly: “Who ‘saw’ the emergency and its pain?”, “Who assumed responsibility and took action?”, “What form did corporate answerability take?” If ethics is a question of unicity; that is, of specific remits, persons and situations, then we must focus on concrete events. Rather than principles, laws or rules; involvement, engagement and relatedness, takes precedence. Our case, its analysis, and its line of reasoning, takes its lead from philosophers that stress the particularity of ethical action; Nietzsche and Levinas. Phenomenal or experiential CSR varies substantially from what is commonly adhered to in the (mainstream) CSR literature.