Progress in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has proved to be a decisive step in many institutions, following the guidelines and encouragement of the European Union and academic proposals. One of the dimensions recent studies have considered central for making progress in the practical development of theoretical proposals for RRI is the institutionalisation of reflexivity at the core of the organisations that develop RRI. This is particularly the case with the promotion of processes that facilitate the establishment of ethical standards (...) throughout the research and innovation cycle. This study attempts to deal with discourses about the institutional reflexivity formulated in the past 15 years based on RRI from a critical-ethical point of view. It does so using the business ethics theory of discourse. This analysis shows that, for this institutional reflexivity to be possible, it is necessary to base the RRI model on a critical-ethical horizon and design an ethical governance system that allows its practical development. (shrink)