Corporate Social Responsibility

Many believe that business entities should have an ethical duty to be socially responsible, to work towards increasing its positive effects on society while decreasing its negative effects. Many organizations look for opportunities to be socially responsible while also creating shareholder wealth.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR) is a term describing a company’s obligation to be accountable to all of its stakeholder in all its operation and activities. Socially responsible companies consider the full scope of their impact on communities and the environment when making decisions, balancing the needs of stakeholder with their need to make profit.

It is overwhelming how corporations have embedded a social responsibility in their mission statements and company objectives. This leaves us with one assertion that is that corporations do have some level of obligation towards society’s morality; however, the corporation itself is not a moral agent (Klaus M. Leisinger). The discussion that follows is about corporations being moral agents or otherwise; however I will reach a conclusion that corporations do have an obligation that extends beyond obeying the law; evens so this obligation have been derived from the corporations quest for profit making. Corporation’s obligation

Research into the topic of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), has shown that there is no single universally accepted definition. CSR has many

Stakeholder theory was given by R. Edward Freeman, which was expressed many ways to represent the stakeholder as an important part of the corporate responsibility. According to Stenberg (1996), this stakeholder theory, is basically not capable to provide better corporate governance. He also stated that, this theory is unable to provide a better view of business performance (Edward & Reed, 1983).

Every business has a social responsibility toward society. That means to maximize positive affects and minimize negative affects on the society. Social responsibilities includes economic-to produce goods and services, that society needs at the price, that satisfy both-business and consumers, legal

The term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to the responsibilities that modern business organisations have to create a healthy and prosperous society.

According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (2014) CSR is described as the ongoing commitment by organisations/businesses to contribute to the economic development while improving the quality of life of the stake holders as well as the community and society as a whole. CSR involves organisations going beyond focusing entirely on how to maximize profits, to being more committed to building a better society.

“According to Carroll (1983), “corporate social responsibility involves the conduct of business so that it is economically profitable, law abiding, ethical and socially supportive. To be socially responsible then means that profitability and obedience to the law are foremost conditions when discussing the firm’s ethics and the extent to which it supports the society in which it exists with contributions of money, time and talent (p.608).”

Corporate social responsibility is an adjusted methodology for organizations to address monetary, social and natural issues in a manner that plans to profit individuals, groups and society. Morals are complex and interactional ideas and beliefs and are an origination of good and bad conduct, characterizing for us when our activities are good and when they are improper. Business morals, then again, is the application of general moral thoughts to business conduct (Fernando, 2013). For any organization to set up they must be socially responsible and follow the business ethics and these are the minimum qualities they must possess in order to progress further in addition to other many other things and this is where the clash begins. The organizations come into dilemma whether they could fulfill social responsibilities and do business at the same time. At this point, Code of conduct and corporate governance principles that were set by government bodies should be followed by the organization in order to do business being socially responsible. Codes of ethics are

Stakeholders are individuals or groups who have an effect or are affected by the activities of an organisation. The stakeholder approach means that the business focuses on the needs of its main stakeholders. These can include the local community, employees, customers and suppliers and can focus on environmental issues, regular orders and security of employment. In contrast to this the shareholders approach focuses on giving a good sized dividend to shareholders, which means the business objectives would be based on getting more profit.

The stakeholder theory is a theory of organizational management and business ethics that addresses morals and values in managing an organization.[1] It was originally detailed by R. Edward Freeman in the book Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, and identifies and models the groups which are stakeholders of a corporation, and both describes and recommends methods by which management can give due regard to the interests of those groups. In short, it attempts to address the "Principle of Who or What Really Counts."[2]

The integrative model of social responsibility, which involves the stakeholder theory and moral minimum theory, and the philosophical ethical theory of utilitarianism are the most responsible approaches to business because they involve the standards of knowing who your actions affect, knowing how to help the most people possible, and knowing how to benefit those who are left out of the positive externalities of a business decision. This paper will discuss the implications of these theories in further depth and will look at a few business cases that demonstrate a failure to meet standards of responsibility.

So what is the Corporate Social Responsibility?The World Business Council for Sustainable Development in its publication “Making Good Business Sense” by Lord Holme and Richard Watts, used the following definition

Corporate Social Responsibility refers to a company’s sense of responsibility towards the community and environment, in both ecological and social aspects, in which it operates. It may also termed as "corporate citizenship" and can involve incurring short-term costs that do not provide an immediate financial benefit to the company, but instead of this it promotes positive social and environmental change.