What is Corporate Social Responsibility and how could this influence the organisational behaviour of “Breadtalk”?
Why is an understanding of cultural differences important to the Business Managers at “Breadtalk”? What are some steps that managers can take to develop greater cross cultural awareness?
1. Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by a company is seen through the public as a way of providing to the society through goodwill and donations. In actual fact, CSR means much more than that. (Hopkins 2007) defines CSR as “treating the stakeholder of the firm ethically or in a responsible manner”.
To expand on what Hopkins mention, (Wan-Jan 2006) describes CSR as a combination of a business and ethical strategy. By not expecting anything in return when providing goodwill to the society, the company is showing its ethical strategy. This is can be seen when Breadtalk indirectly provided aid for the Sichaun earthquake in 2008. All profits from selling their “Peace Panda Bread” was contributed to the Red Cross Society and Chinese embassy (Breadtalk Group Limited 2008). In Singapore, where Breadtalk was first established, the company has also played its part in conserving the environment. They started the initiative of using bio degradable plastic bags since the start of 2007, although it would cost them 15% more using them (Lian 2009).
1.1 Influences on Organisational Behaviour
Although their efforts do not improve profits to their stakeholders, there are many positive outcomes which would outweigh the reduced profits. By taking a broader view, the positive effects are shown through the business strategy portion. Through their actions in the form of doing their part for the Sichuan earthquake, Breadtalk managed to increase its reputation thus made it easier entering into the China market they were trying to break into.
Stakeholder loyalty, improvement in pride and morale of existing employees, and an
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