The article examines the organisational production and distribution of normatively charged ideas for governing transnational business. Based on the United Nations Global Compact Initiative, it is argued that the UN version of ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) builds on a metanarrative of rationality, involving ideals of transparency and legibility combined with an emphasis on consensus and harmony. The strong accent on partnership, agreement and dialogue leaves little space for the involved parties to articulate and defend diverging interests. By transforming what are basically political conflicts of interest into win–win terms, CSR standards and the technologies of transparency, legibility, and accountability foreclose conflictual space, and emerge as an instance of ‘post-political global ethics’.