As described in the book, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the very important essences of ethics. Corporates should perform and run in a way that improves society and its occupants and be held responsible for any of its activities that affects people, their community and their environment. It is organization’s moral responsibility to form a commitment to give back to the society and the stakeholders of the organization since they are fundamental reason company is running by and running for. Any commercial organization makes profit out of the customers, community. Hence, it is their prime responsibility to do well and give back to the community in…
Group 7 Exercises (suitable for use with the chapter relating to global competition and competing in foreign markets)…
As a result of phenomenal ill effects of unethical corporate activities, corporate social responsibility is no longer a concept fostered by idealist on the fringe. It entered the mainstream. However, CSR has been susceptible to abuse by some top executives for window dressing, diversion to cover-up to charges of bad leadership and poor management practices. Moreover, a socially responsible company does not want to be penalized financially for being socially responsible. This paper is aimed to identify the ways with which corporate citizenship contribute to achieving the core business strategy.…
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a topic has received the attention of organisations and managers as a whole. The 1950s marked the start of the modern era of CSR for managers, where Howard R. Bowen (1953) defines social responsibilities in his publication as the businesses’ duty to make decision and follow principles that are acceptable to society. However, Milton Friedman (1970) argued that social responsibilities is for people not businesses, he claims that the only responsibility business managers should have is to use all their resources to maximise profit and increase shareholder’s wealth (Friedman, York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970, pp. 32-34).…
Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician and writer, who had a massive impact on the research agenda of the economics profession. His famous words “the only responsibility of business is to increase its profits” (Friedman, Milton. 1970) led to many controversial debates on whether businesses should have ethics or if profit should be their main goal. Corporate social responsibility has many definitions, as its interpretation is quite loose, so I have chosen one that relates the most to this essay, given by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, in 2000: “Corporate social responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as the local community and society at large” (Dahlsrud, A. 2006).…
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a firm’s decision to accept responsibility for its social, environmental and ethical actions. A firm’s decisions whether to adopt and rank importance to CSR should be due to a variety of reasons, like the financial stability of the company aswell as the culture of the organisation. But one definitive factor would be a firm’s corporate objectives, corporate objectives are a quantifiable statement of a business’s goals which should include measurable targets. Essay will look to examine the relative importance of CSR in relation to other corporate objectives.…
In the last 50 years Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) became a day-today subject discussed by multinationals, governments, Non Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) and society in general. These discussions vary from social to environmental issues, such as labor rights and climate change. Furthermore, CSR is directly linked to companies, thus most companies opt for certain programs from which will receive market-based incentives (Jr., W. et al., 2005). CSR as a mainstream topic can be seen through the volume of ‘voluntary’ actions, publications, seminars, and organizations, committed to it. However, there is not one unique definition of CSR although the fact most definitions comprise a correlation between profit maximization and the fulfillment of civil society (Doane, D., 2005). The term Corporate Social Responsibility started its uncoordinated evolution in 1950s, due to stakeholder pressures and commitments towards the future generations (De Bakker et al., 2005). This evolution was pronounced with the publication of “Social Responsibilities of the Businessman” by Howard R. Bowen’s, in 1953. After this publication, a great range of research and works was dedicated to the subject, contributing to the development of the social responsibility concept (Carroll, A., 1979). Some of the pioneers in CSR framework were Keith Davis (1960), he advocated that social responsibility related to businesses’ was…
In understanding the subject of social responsibility in business, there are many varying views and theories presented. The argument, at the extremes, is one that is purely economic in nature and the other that requires corporation’s responsibility to society. Today society demands social responsiveness of businesses in the marketplace. A businesses’ failure to act socially or ethically responsible, in some cases, could form the foundation for its own peril. My paper attempts to define social responsibility, discuss views and theories, and provide case examples where businesses respond to situations in the global marketplace. The argument that corporation’s responsibility to shareholders to maximize profits as a sole objective is no longer acceptable by society. The purely economic view of the issue will not suffice. Businesses will always seek to maximize profits, but companies are increasingly aware that organizational values and social responsiveness play to the very heart of their goals in the pursuit of profits.…
For my purpose here, I would like to examine the case for which the two views of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are positioned in. One of these viewpoints is that CSR is practiced ethically in businesses simply because it is the right thing to do, through being moral and just by following a Values-based management system. The other perspective on CSR is that it is simply a ‘do-gooder’ ploy, and that it is only practiced within firms to impress society and those around them.…
Abstract: Starting from the times of barter system to today’s modern era of plastic money, the mankind has trodden a remarkably long path. Undoubtedly “profitability” has always been the driving force and an undercurrent behind all this development; but as every coin has two facets; growing cut throat competition and business rivalries started taking heavy toll on the quality, transparency, environment and the society in general endangering the peaceful coexistence of business and society. The businesses houses started realizing that they would have to rise over and above the profitability and take care of all those associated with their survival in the society directly or indirectly. This realization resulted into the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This research paper moves around developing an understanding about the corporate social responsibility (CSR), delving into its concept and finding out its scope taking the case study of the TATA Group under Mr. Ratan Tata who has exemplified the sense of responsibility towards the upliftment of common masses and protection of the environment and development of the nation. Keywords: Corporate citizenship, Corporate social responsibility, Employee, Productivity, Profitability, Society, Stakeholders. I. Introduction…
Traditionally companies focus primarily on gaining profits without regard for the community and environment. Ignoring the waste and pollution for example causes adverse impact for the social. Air pollution, for example, caused by factories with chemical materials can weaken respiration system. It was believed that the concern about environment produces extra expenditures reducing firm’s profit. Thus, they tend to override and ignoring the issue. In contrary, majority of the costumers expect more respects, supports, and cares from factories for the communities and environment. In addition, the government through policies has tried to force the corporations being care about their responsibilities. However, a concept including strategy to build a good relationship between corporations and their stakeholders has been introduced. Corporate social responsibility (CSR), the concept, has been practiced and developed since the 1970s receiving good responses from government and society around the world. CSR today is performed as a strategic management approached. A research by Preuss (2011, p. 23) mentions the 4Ps of innovative CSR on the basis of CSR project content, processes,…
The connection between corporations and society has been to industrialists’ mind since the age of Henry Ford, if not before but the first effort to theorize this relationship has been made by Howard Bowen’s Social Responsibilities of the Businessman (1953) who tried to give systematic and rationalized arguments in favor of CSR by stating that the big corporations should consider using their power and influence with social consequences and responsibilities in mind. The main argument to this point came by Milton Friedman (1962) who argued that the “only responsibility of a corporation is to its shareholders”. Academics were divided between the two arguments for a decade without advancing a lot the debate.…
The present-day conception of corporate social responsibility (CSR) implies that companies voluntarily integrate social and environmental concerns in their operations and interaction with stakeholders. The European Commission defines it as “a concept whereby companies decide voluntarily to contribute to a better society and a cleaner environment.” (European Commission, 2001, p. 5) It is related to complex issues such as environmental protection, human resources management, health and safety at work, relations with local communities, relations with suppliers and consumers. The notion of CSR is one of ethical and moral issues surrounding corporate decision making and behaviour. Knowing if a company should undertake certain activities or refrain from doing so because they are beneficial or harmful to society is a central question. Social issues deserve moral consideration of their own and should lead managers to consider the social impacts of corporate activities in decision making. Regardless of any stakeholders’ pressures, actions which lead to things such as the conservation of the Earth’s natural resources or bio-diversity preservation, are morally praiseworthy. However, some argue that the contribution of concepts such as CSR is just a reminder that the search for profit should be constrained by social considerations (Valor, 2005, p. 199). Increasingly CSR is analysed as a source of competitive advantage and not as an end in itself (Branco and Rodrigues, 2006). In effect, the concept of CSR has evolved from being regarded as detrimental to a company’s profitability, to being considered as somehow benefiting the company as a whole, at least in the long run (see, for example, Hess et al., 2002; Porter and Kramer, 2002; Smith, 2003).…
The term “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) first emerged in the 1960s to discuss the role of business in society. Its definition, however, was argued by Friedman (1970) as a responsibility towards maximising shareholders value, with its “one and only social responsibility… is to use its resource and engage in activities designed to increase the profits so along as it stays within the rules of the game”. Over time, there are more versions of what CSR entailed, including that of the European Commission (2011), as “the concept that an enterprise is accountable for its impact on all relevant stakeholders. It is the continuing commitment by business to behave fairly and responsibly, and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the work force and their families as well as of the local community and society at large…” In essence, CSR is reflected as a contribution to sustainable development, implying the way…
The concept of CSR has been assigned different ideas and definitions through time. By 1950, the first CSR definitions were focusing on managerial levels (Wood, 1991). The main argument was that business executives had obligations beyond the economic interests of a firm. Business executives had to consider how their decisions would affect a society’s values, stockholders, employees, suppliers and local communities. Nevertheless, in 1973, Elibert and Parket changed the focus by referring to CSR as good ‘neighborliness’, meaning that companies have to respect the rules of the ‘neighborhood’ and must contribute to solving local problems such as unemployment, pollution and urban decay. According to Carroll (1999), these authors suggested that firms have to collaborate by following the rules of society and help solving society’s problems voluntarily. An opposite perspective was proposed by Friedman who, in 1970, wrote that the only social responsibility that businesses have is to increase their own profits. Friedman affirmed that managers have a responsibility to their shareholders and not to society; thus managers should not use company’s resources for social means. “The stockholders or the customers or the employees could separately spend their own money on the particular action [social responsibility] if they wished” (Friedman, 1970, p. 225).…