“Social responsibility is defined as an organization's obligation to maximize its positive impact on stakeholders and to minimize its negative impact” (Ferrell, O., & Fraedrich, J. (2010). Stakeholder Relationships, Social Responsibility, and Corporate Governance. In Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases : 2009 update (7th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning). There are four main types of social responsibility which are economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic. The type of social responsibility that Company Q is dealing with the most is philanthropic. “Philanthropic responsibility refers to activities that are not required of businesses but promote human welfare or goodwill”(Ferrell, O., & Fraedrich, J. (2010). Stakeholder Relationships, Social Responsibility, and Corporate Governance. In Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases : 2009 update (7th ed.). Mason, OH: South- Western Cengage Learning). By not donating to the food bank, Company Q is not showing philanthropic responsibility. Their day old food that could be feeding other people is instead being thrown away. Economic responsibility; however, is a factor that the company is worried about. Company Q is more focused on making sure that they do not lose revenues because of fraud or any other factor that would cause it. Because the Company decided to sell more health conscience and organic products they are making a bigger profit off of these items. Ethical responsibility is also what the company seems to be lacking in. Showing consumers that they are more worried about a profit loss than the welfare of the people in the community is not what the company needs because it could result in a loss of customers and give them a bad name. Company Q is not showing any sign of lack of legal responsibility so that is one category that do not need to improve on.
Company Q in order to improve on their social responsibility needs to first of all start