Corporate Social Responsibility : Csr

Corporations are encouraged to conduct their activities in an ethically responsible manner, however neither the corporate world nor academia has produced a single – all encompassing definition of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The basic problem is that there are too many self-serving definitions that often lean toward the specific interests of the entities involved (Van Marrewijk, 2003). There has even been a quantitative study conducted on the many definitions of the term (Dahlsrud, 2006).

The purpose of this essay is to research the notion of CSR and uncover its true framework and outline what social responsibility truly means to corporate organisations, and whether it should be seriously considered to be a legitimate addition to the corporate framework of an organisation.

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

Corporate Social Responsibility (“CSR”) is often described as the measures taken by companies to manage environmental, social and economic impacts of their business activities. Since the globalisation of economic and labour markets, CSR has become an argumentative topic. For companies to be considered as good in terms of CSR, they are required to go above and beyond of their legal requirements and take into consideration what is in the best interests of its stakeholders.

However, modern theory known as corporate social responsibility (CSR), has complicated the situation in that stating that companies are not only responsible to its shareholders, but also to the stakeholders which its actions may impact (Freeman 1984). While this may seem to contradict the mantra of profit maximisation, Russo and Perrini (2010) suggest that in today’s conscience-minded society, success is based not only on maximising profit but also on a corporation’s stakeholder relationships, which include social and environmental issues.

Throughout my research of what Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is, I noticed that many organizations have framed their own definition, considering a common ground between them. My own definition of CSR is the voluntary continuous commitment and responsibility on the effects that an organization has on both internal (employees) and external stakeholders (communities, environment) that go beyond legal or ethical standard required to operate, as well creating a synergistic relationship between the two parties promoting win-win relationship based on trust and the positive perception that reflects the organization to the community. (Mirvis, 2012, p. 110)

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a hot topic in business for greater than ten years due to the scrutiny of company’s performance. It has been recognised that company’s need to look longer than just at a short term profit perspective. (Brammer and Millington, 2004; Idowu and Papasolomou, 2007; Knox et al., 2005). A greater amount of companies are choosing to adopt CSR, this may be due to the increased pressure to reduce their negative impact on society as a whole. It is now consider the norm for managers to take CSR into account with decision making.

The concept of CSR (corporate social responsibility), has been around for many years, it has continued to grow in significance and importance. Moreover, there has been a public debate and commentary on the same subject. For instance, (International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility) argues that CSR has had social-political influence i.e. the political regime, culture and legal systems of many countries around the globe. More companies around the globe in are engaging themselves in CSR activities, as a result, providing more information on social and environmental issues to the mass. According to (Burritt and Schaltegger, 2010; Gurvitish and Sidorova, 2012), in the past, research that considers both CSR reporting and activity has

Business personalities, government officials, and loans are hedging more attention on the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The core issue is the appropriate responsibility of business. In as much as firms ought to obey the law, but beyond complete compliance with environmental laws, the question is whether firms have extra social responsibilities to commit part of their resources to environmental preservation voluntarily.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept whereby organizations consider the wellbeing of the public by taking responsibility for the effect of their actions on all stakeholders; customers, employees, shareholders, communities and the environment in every aspect of their operations. This responsibility is seen to extend beyond the statutory obligation to comply with legislation and sees organizations willingly undertaking additional steps to improve the quality of life for employees and their families as well as for the local community and society at large.

Recently, the expectations of society for companies have increased more than before (Craig, Bhattacharya, Vogel and Levine, 2010), so one significant issue that most firms have been actively involved in is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Some may debate that it decreases company’s profits by spending much money on CSR. However, according to Needle (2004), ‘good’ CSR is also good for business, a firm could benefit from doing CSR. Thus, this paper aims to explain its importance. It begins with the definition of CSR and its four responsibilities, then presents how it influences a business and benefits it can bring. Finally, I am going to describe strategic CSR and discuss why firms have social responsibility.

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

While corporate social responsibility (CSR) has existed for a long time, it has garnered attention only in the last two decades as an important aspect of doing business. Academic research on CSR has evolved over the years, indicating a change in how CSR is viewed as time goes by. In the earlier years of

The purpose of this report is to highlight the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the company .CSR is the continuing commitment by business to contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the worker force and their families as well as of the community and society at the large .According to Nielsen’s Global Survey on corporate social responsibility(2014),shows that 55% of global online customers in 60 countries said that they can spend