From the question of the conflict of interest between employer and employee, this paper proposes an analytical framework that aims at clarifying the sense of the “responsible” practices that govern the employment relation. They have been developed for some years with the expansion of corporate social responsibility. In the light of theoretical developments in economics and management and in some empirical studies on corporate social responsibility, we argue that the instruments of corporate social responsibility that are used to manage employees in a “responsible” way are ambivalent and do not fundamentally call into question “classical” human resource management practices.