**Abstract**

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), as the concept of both practice and research, is still generally understood and explained in narrow political lenses, basically due to the economic and instrumentalist rationality. Such rationality tends to result into more reproductive outcomes about the social conditions than what ought to be transformative. As such, not much is researched and documented about CSR in what could be alternative practical explanations beyond the takenfor-granted orientations. Toward closing this seeming research gap in the theorypractice nexus, the institutional research about which this article is reporting has examined the dialectical relationship of CSR with the idea of university education as the public good. The study entailed the content analysis of the institutional records in one case of university education in South Africa. The history of the university and the relations that the university has with its community were complex enough to make a single case study about the value of corporate social responsibility and the idea of the public and common good (CSR for UE-PG). The main finding of the research is that the university is grappling with her history, which constrains her from transcending into new heights about CSR for UE-PG, despite the commitments to do so!

**Keywords:** corporate social responsibility, public good, Walter Sisulu University, scholarship of engagement, academic project development framework, integrated quality management systems
