The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
Billy Sexton
Bridgewater State University
Author Note
This paper was prepared during the Spring Semester of 2016 for COMM 226-003 - Introduction to Public Relations.
The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Corporate Social Responsibility. Harvard Pilgrim Health Care is a nonprofit health service company serving members located along the east coast. The goal of their company is to provide the tools, training, and leadership in order to improve the quality and value of health care. Harvard Pilgrim is involved in serving the community. The Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation leads projects to get fresh food at an affordable price to different communities in need, supports healthy communities through grant contributions, fighting childhood obesity, as well as protecting transgender rights by supporting the public accommodations bill.
Healthy Food Fund Finding fresh, healthy food is not always easy, especially if you are looking for that food at an affordable price. The Harvard Pilgrim Foundation’s Healthy Food Fund is responsible for bringing fresh, affordable food to communities in need throughout Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. This may be one of the most important things Harvard Pilgrim does for their community. Providing ways for families to obtain fresh food that may not be able to afford it is
Today, it is without a doubt that public communication is at the heart of our economy, our politics and our society. It is being used in different aspects of society - studios use it to advertise their films. Advocates use it to encourage social causes. The businessmen use it to furnish their image. Politicians use it, for them to get elected. It is a field constructed on various ideas and images, many information and persuasion, tactics and strategy. There is no product or policy that will ever succeed without a clever message that targets the right audience or people in innovative and creative ways. To communicate strategically is one of today’s ability to communicate and what our programs are all about. Therefore, public communications
Since 1998, Bank of America has become one of the most successful financial institutions in the industry. With the mission to “make financial lives better, through the power of every connection”, Bank of America has operated its business align with its purpose. While assisting its clients understand their money, the company also put on a lot of effort on helping the communities by executing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It is undeniable that the company has successfully addressed many critical problems in the environmental, social and economics arenas, as it continually receive awards and recognitions for its CSR efforts.
It is often recommended for (HCO)’s to have a corporate compliance plan to be more efficient, reduce errors, and not have small errors turn into large errors. As (OIG) it’s a necessary and fundamental need to incorporate a corporate compliance plan to have for staff and management to stay organized and lessen the chance of fraud, waste, and abuse in the company. Stated by, (Cleverly, Song, & Cleverly, 2011), it is effective only if it includes management support, effective communication, continuous monitoring, and individual accountability. All these aspects are a continual monitoring requirement as long the corporate compliance is in place for the duration.
Public relations serve many positive functions, to radio and television announcements of school closings and community events, they make us aware of what is happening around us. This type of public relations is needed and benefits the public without personal hidden agendas. However, there is a darker side to public relations that seeks manipulate an unsuspecting audience for their own personal gain. It is this type of public relations that the film Toxic Sludge is Good for You is unraveling. Through use of every kind of media communication and technology, public relations firms have set out to convince people that what they are saying is good for us (Toxic Sludge is Good For You [video file] Access to Restricted Library Resources, n.d.).
Therefore, with the five and one-half million-meal donation, Olive Garden offers their effort to aid in the alleviation of domestic hunger experienced by the millions of families facing food insecurity. Hence, via the Olive Garden Harvest program, approximately eight hundred U.S. and Canada Olive Garden restaurants will utilize superfluous food, and prepare it in a safe manner for donation to shelters, food banks, as well as, established charities. Nevertheless, subsequent public relation initiatives remain essential component of Olive Garden in order to maintain a successful
The following is a rhetorical evaluation of the Public Relations tactics employed by Paul Frank Industries after the fall out of a media relations event that showcased Native American heritage in a way that was perceived as offensive to the Native American culture. Ethics should be at the heart of all PR programs and should lend itself to foster both trust and loyalty with an organizations stakeholders and publics. Frank Industries reacted calmly, employed best practices, and secured better relations with the Native American publics, however, the following will demonstrate where they missed it and how they can improve programs in the future.
Companies today are heavily influenced by the demands of customers and stakeholders. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to the social and environmental responsibility policies and practices developed by an organization to increase its positive influence and reduce its negative activity towards society (Parks, 2008). The business approach and corporate philosophy of an organization is easily altered due to economic pressures, technological improvement and stakeholder needs and demands. "Going green" or being eco-friendly is one such demand. Environmental and sustainability concerns originate most often from governments, consumer activists, and the general public (Schlosser, 2008). Thus, organizations must implement sustainability into daily practices. In addition, sustainability alters the nature of competition and drives companies to think differently about products, processes, and technologies (Parks, 2008).
Contributing the one million dollars annually to the United Way would be a better choice in terms of ethics and social responsibility. If the company chooses to follow the concept of corporate social responsibility, the donation would allow United Way to keep helping the community. In turn, once individuals from the community are helped, they will later be financially stable to go out and purchase their own vehicles. This strategy will help the community first, while in the long run the automobile manufacturing may profit from this. Also, once the community finds out how involved and socially responsible an automobile company is over another, they will want to support them over an automobile company that isn’t socially responsible. Another
The most recent definition of public relations, according to the Public Relations Society of America (2012), states that “Public Relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Through the rapid advancement of modern media and technology, there have never been more outlets and opportunities available for accomplishing the goals of public relations. Believing the development of social media has not created serious changes in the way public relations practitioners go about their duties would be foolish and a fast track to falling behind in this rapid world of communication. The main goals of public relations are “to
Press agentry, public information, two-way asymmetric public relations, and two-way symmetric public relations are four models of public relations theory devised by Grunig and Hunt (1983). In this essay, the author goes on to identify an example each from current public relations business practices that goes on to show the four public relation models in action. Further stress is provided to ensure that the examples have all been taken place within last twelve months in the Australian media and justification of selection is to be done by comparing it with real world examples that are chosen.
Media relations can be defined as one of the most significant areas of the practice of public relations. (Shaw&White, 2004) It enhances the practice of public relations by serving a systematic, strategized and mutually beneficial relationship between journalists and the public relations practitioners to build credibility, understanding and respect between the two parties. (Supa&Zoch, 2009) It is essential to cultivate a positive and healthy relationship between public relations practitioners and journalists because journalists tend to look at public relations practitioners in a negative way where they believe that they spin information to get free publicity which making it difficult for journalists to report legitimate news and at the same time, against the basic rules of news writing. (Fedler and DeLorme, 2002) Another study by Kiranjit and Halimahton (2006) also suggests that public relations practitioners and journalists are very much sceptical about each other’s role and the relationship between two of them is doubtful and uncertain. From the point of view of public relations practitioners, they complaint that journalists do not understand the role of public relations. On the other side, journalists tend to think that public relations
The theory explains that the value of public relations in organization and society lies in socially responsible managerial decisions and quality organization to public relations. Organisations must behave in ways that solve the problems and satisfy the goals of the stakeholders as well as the management in order to be effective. Good relationship with organisation’s strategic publics is helpful in developing and achieving goals desired by both the organization and its publics, reducing costs of negative publicity, and increasing revenue by providing products and services needed by stakeholders. Practitioners identify publics who are affected by or affect organizational decisions and communicate symmetrically with them to build high quality long term relations.
Because they have a large degree of understanding of the public relations is an image of the establishment of business or put more persuasion efforts for business. The reporter general agree PR is in a public image, propaganda, persuasion activities, as well as marketing efforts, and promote the organization 's position. As the role of public relations become more diverse and important, public relations progress toward becoming the subject of strategy management, it is essential for public relations to the strategy. And to a wide range of business functions integration marketing communication (IMC) concept of the functions of public relations as a commitment to development a of an organization and its product, the image and the impact of the public or the consumer in the campaign of behavior(Ha, JH, & Ferguson, MA 2015).
The public relations tactics in relation to the corporate context will now be examined. Customer relations can be associated with the monitoring of attitudes of key publics and stakeholders especially in regards to any negative incidents that have the potential to effect the organisation’s reputation and consumer trust (Wilcox, 2013, p.312). For Malaysian Airlines, this is evident given the potential for consumer boycotts with the missing aircraft’s (Crossman Communications, 2015, p2). Having over 12, 000 employees, employee relations are important for the organisation. Employee relations consist of monitoring employees’ attitudes and beliefs towards the organisation (Wilcox, 2013, p316) as there is potential for negative word of mouth by employees essentially damaging the company’s reputation. This is evident as according to Malaysian Airlines, they offer a “dynamic exciting environment that nurtures a diverse talented team that work to make great things happen” (2017). Finally, media relations are vital in a corporate context as “negative coverage can cause a corporation’s reputation to plummet” (Wilcox, 2013, p. 310). Having said that, it is important as public relations professionals to establish positive relationships with those who operate in the media industry. Kimberly Blessing argues the two fields (public relations and journalism) have an important working interrelationship with “60% of PR
Only recently being recognized as a discipline in itself, modern day professional public relations practices can trace its roots to the early 1900s where the first public relations firm, the Publicity Bureau, was founded in Boston. In 1923, Austrian-American public relations pioneer, Edward Bernays, identified three fundamental concepts of public relations. In 1984, American theorists, Grunig and Hunt, conceptualized the now-famous four models of public relations and the excellence theory that were generally adopted by public relation agencies across the globe. With so many significant milestones and theories of public relations established in the United States, it stands to reason that public relation practices would naturally adopt a western perspective.