Corporate Social Responsibility Essay

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.

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

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

Even though customers are a major key to success of any business, limiting CSR practices to an external group of stakeholder is insufficient. From the customers’ side, the focus is “on the corporate brand and its societal relationships with external constituencies.” (Lacey, Hensel 316). It is undeniable that implementation of CSR can attract the customers and lead them to be a significant are source of a financial gain. That is because CSR changes the way consumers behave in the market and alter their beliefs toward the company standards.” (Lacey, Hensel 316). Nevertheless, extensive focus on the social gains may cause the business to suffer financially. If that happened, the case is considered to be a failure of executing CSR. Again, this is a result of shifting all the business gears to benefit a sole group the stakeholders.

1. It is hard for companies to communicate their efforts in CSR to shareholders and investors. Although companies have progressed from only 20% of public companies publishing CSR reports to 72% from 2011 to 2013, there are still no universal standards established for reporting CSR information. Therefore, even the best CSR efforts can lose their value simply because the efforts are not communicated to users of financial statements. This is also in part due to CSR efforts being ill-defined. While some CSR ideas are universal many of the aspects of CSR are industry specific and hard to translate into meaningful disclosures for interested parties.

These three strategic components can lead to successful CSR practices that improve the company’s image and profits, satisfy its stakeholders, and make a positive difference with regards to its social or environmental concerns. While the definition of CSR varies within the literature, I suggest that a customized CSR process that incorporates CSR fit, stakeholder engagement and strategic communications will lead to successful CSR practices.

Among modern century more companies are being interested about corporate social responsibility (CSR) as business reports proved that it became a fact in business growth. CSR is a mechanism accomplished to maintain the economic, legal, and ethical responsibility to the community as same as organization. Stakeholder theory enables managers to take account of these different interests in business ethical responsibility:

Many companies have started to engage in CSR as a strategy in order to gain benefits that can give them an added advantage over their competitors. There have been increasing numbers of companies engaged in CSR to run their businesses. Nowadays, corporate social responsibility (CSR) can drive companies to succeed in business by increasing sales volume and brand awareness. I decided to choose Starbucks Company as a case study for this thesis because this company has a good reputation in terms of social responsibility.

The major of (CSR) is establishing social, environmental and economic sustainability. Initially, (CSR) is a requirement. However, some firms extend the jurisprudence towards engagement in social activities that are going beyond the interest of the firm (Cadbury, 2006). However, the entirety of this phenomenon gets its basis on embracing responsibility for corporate actions. In addition, it issues a general affirmative impact of its external environment

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept that means, when an enterprise generates profits and takes legal obligations to its shareholders and creditors, it should also be socially responsible for other stakeholders, such as employees, customers, community and the environment in which it operates. CSR encourages enterprises not only to pay attention to profits accumulation while operating, but also to make a contribution to consumers, the environment in which it operates as well as the whole of society.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become imperative on business convention nowadays. “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 of the local community and society at large” (Holme and Watts, 2000). The term CSR was appeared in the 1950s, but until 1989, Ben and Jerry’s was the first company which truly publish a social responsibility report (Coles, 2012). In recent years, numerous organizations evaluate firms on their CSR performance since the society is concerned about the CSR ranking. Consequently, business managers in various countries may treat CSR as an inevitable priority (Porter & Kramer, 2006). Nevertheless, CSR is still a controversial issue in the world. Some businesses are struggling to balance corporate and social aims due to the growing societal attention in CSR. This essay will compare and contrast arguments in favour of and against CSR from the perspective of firms.

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

CSR can improve the company’s reputation and branding and this in turn improves the prospects for the company to be more effective to attract new customers and increase market share.

However, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is becoming an increasingly significant category by which a company 's reputation is evaluated. A variety of social and environmental issues across a broad spectrum of industries have recently been covered in the media - all of