Corporate Social Responsibility At The End Of The Tunnel

Director, Nonprofit Management & Community Service Program & Robert W. Scherer Professor Emeritus, Department of Management, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA, and 1 Assistant Professor of Management, School of Business, Indiana University Kokomo, 2300 S. Washington Street, Kokomo, IN 46904, USA Email: acarroll@uga.edu; kshabana@iuk.edu

Based on my interpretation of CSR, I see it as a voluntary obligation that companies have promised to their stakeholders to fulfill by improving, or at least not harm, the environmental and social wellbeing. When companies engage in CSR, they voluntarily promise to, for example, carry the responsibility to protect the environment and take actions against bribe or other corruptive activities related to their business. It certainly has some positive influences to specific areas based on my knowledge gained from other classes; nevertheless, when judge CSR in the context of total impacts on our society and environment, it is obvious that CSR has failed its mission to lessen the negative impacts of business based on the evidences that provided by the author. Also, since there is a strong positive relationship between CSR behaviors and consumers’ reactions to a firm’s products and services, it seems to me, now, that CSR for the most companies is just a fancy cover that helps them to create or promote a good image and reputation. The recent case that shows the failure of CSR of Volkswagen even make me believe that CSR programs may be just a marketing or public relation exercise for many

Once a business realizes that it has gotten wrapped up in maximizing profit that it neglect ethics of care, the next step is to readjust and realign its core values internally and be more responsible to the environment in which they operate by showing societal care. Therefore, the aim of this report is to address the importance of realigning the business with ethics of care through involving in CSR activities, and as well as showing how these actions can impact on a company’s performance even if it may be demoralized in the society.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is something that affects all companies and should be an active factor in the company’s decision making. It is something all corporations need to care about. CSR is when business’ or corporations take part in an initiative or campaign for a cause that will benefit society and/or in some way make the world a better place (Taylor, 2015). Initially, Corporate Social Responsibility started to take shape around the 1950’s, but some say that it dates all the way back to the 1800s, the idea of CSR was seen (Carroll, 2007). One may think that because it is dated so long ago, it doesn’t have an important impact today nevertheless, it is proven that Corporate Social Responsibility is a pathway for entities to self benefit as they are in the process of benefitting society.

In this article, “The Truth About CSR,” authors Rangan, Chase and Karim stress the importance in aligning a company’s social and environmental activities with its business purpose and values (Rangan, Chase, & Karim, 2015, 41). Outcomes of CSR programs should be a “spillover” and not a primary focus of a business, expressing concern towards social responsibility and corporations failing to contribute to society accordingly (Rangan, Chase, Karim, 2015, 42). There is a great deal of importance in companies refocusing their CSR activities on a primary goal and in providing an organized process for bringing consistency and discipline to CSR strategies (42). Rangan, Chase and Karim want corporations to understand why it is important for them to evaluate their CSR activities and refocus them towards the goal of reinforcing the firm’s societal and environmental actions, while also ensuring their actions add to the overall purpose and values of the corporation. According to the authors, even though

In this book, Clane et al (2008) states why companies need the CSR strategy in many areas of their activity: increased social awareness, as a result of global warming; major disasters; social consciousness and media pressure. The book explores each of these factors and analyses how a business can overcome its weakness and create opportunities. This source explains the overall advantages to a business and it details the benefits of running a business. Furthermore, this source is highly influenced by a business’s social performance, purpose and adherence with Corporate Social Responsibility.

CSR is the obligations of the business to pursue those policies, to make those decisions, or to follow those lines of action which are desirable in terms of the objectives and values of our society. According to (Carroll and Shabana, 2010), CSR has also become one of the most orthodox and widely accepted concepts in the business world during recent years. According to (Sweeney and Coughlan 2008) and (Maignan and Ralston 2002; Wanderley et al. 2008), Organizations increasingly use CSR activities to position their corporate brand in the eyes of consumers and other stakeholders, such as through their annual reporting . communicating about social activities does not always benefit the communicating organization, notably because CSR communication may trigger stakeholders' scepticism and cynicism (Mohr et al. 2001; Schlegelmilch and Pollach 2005).Many organizations engage in CSR because they believe that it is in the organization’s best

The report is aimed at CSR initiatives that have been and continues to be the subject of contentious debate in recent years. Such initiatives entail that businesses do their bit, beyond what the law may require them to do, to give back to the society in which they operate and make profits from. These initiatives often do not

The popularity of CSR has grown substantially in the last couple of decades. Many people may have grown skeptical of business in the wake of corporate scandals such as Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom followed by the sub-prime mortgage market, which have all gained large amounts of negative publicity. Stakeholders are more aware of the performance of companies along a broader set of metrics that portray the company’s operations in a more comprehensive manner that provides information about social performances and environmental performances. Much of the concept of corporate sustainability is rooted in the notion of sustainable development with can be defined as the ability to meet the needs of the current population without compromising the ability of future generations to

For many years, researchers held that the core responsibility of a corporation was to provide shareholders with financial returns. Carroll (1979) proposed that organizations have other types of responsibilities towards the society. In Carroll’s view, at some stage society has economic, legal, ethical, and other expectations. The essential part of Carroll’s definition of CSR is that a company has four primary responsibilities: to be profitable, observe the law, be ethical, and conduct discretionary activities. Drawing on those four responsibilities Carroll (1991) created a four-level pyramid of CSR and stated that the CSR policy of a company must include all of them. Carroll placed the economic responsibilities at the base of the pyramid, since for a company to operate successfully, it must have a financial return. On the second level were the legal responsibilities which in order to be fulfilled corporations must pursue their economic objectives (Carroll, 1991). Placing the economic and legal responsibilities at the bottom of the pyramid was reasonable because those two are fundamental for a company to be successful. The ethical responsibilities were placed on the third level of the pyramid suggesting that organizations ought to conduct their businesses operations in a fair and appropriate way and ought to protect the stakeholders’ moral rights (Carroll, 1991).

Various authors have different definitions of what Corporate Social Responsibility. According to Lorde Holmes and Richard Watts, 1998 in their publication ‘Making Good Business Sense,’ they define CSR as “the continuing commitment by businesses to behave ethically and contribute to

Despite the increasingly obvious trend of CSR, conflicts around the topic are common especially in real businesses. Conducting CSR initiatives or programs requires investing corporate resources, including charitable giving, investing in green solutions, paying for better working environment and assisting community development, for returns that are usually distant and uncertain. For the decision makers within corporations, it is hard to judge because they would be at someone else’s expense to create social value. Another conflict occurs when it comes to the role of CSR in businesses’ development: whether it is harmful or helpful for the businesses’ profitability is still quite a concern, not to mention that the difficulties to get a measurable bottom line out of CSR initiatives.

A company's success is usually assessed in terms of its annual profits. However, this view does not take into account ethics and sustainability. Examine the arguments for and against CSR. Should all companies be required to incorporate CSR within their local community?

Today, in this complex business environment where all business enterprises are surviving by realizing maximum profits possible, there exists a mechnism called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that is providing the required edge towards success. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the way a corporation achieves a balance among its economic, social, and environmental responsibilities in its operations so as to address shareholder and other stakeholder expectations. This is because it is

The (Commission, 2015) defines CSR as “companies taking responsibility for their impact on society”. It adds that CSR should be initiated by companies, with public authorities playing a supporting role through policy and regulation. Companies the commission would consider as socially responsible would have to comply with the law, integrate social, environmental, ethical, consumer and human rights concerns into their business and strategy operations. This recent definition of CSR covers most if not all of the angles of the different definitions and models of CSR put forth by writers in the CSR space. However as written by many authors, this is a dynamic field that continues to evolve (Carroll and Shabana, 2010, Geva, 2008, Carroll, 1999, Lee, 2008, Pirnea et al., 2011, Waddock, 2008). According to (Spector, 2008) its roots can be traced to the pre- World War II era (early years of the cold war), but for the sake of this paper we shall not go that far back. We