Corporate Social Responsibilty

New Balance is privately owned company, which is the second largest footwear manufacture in the United States and the fourth largest footwear manufacture in the world with annual sales in 2008 of $1.61 billion (Veleva, 2010).

Company Q is a small local grocery store chain who has made poor decisions when it comes to social responsibility. Company Q’s business is suffering because the owners’ do not know the heart of running a business, Social responsibility. When opening a business it is not all about the money. Sure it is nice to think about growth and reaping the benefits of a bigger bank account, but the first thing that is important in business is the consumers. Who is buying what you are selling? What will make consumers buy more, comeback, or tell friends? Businesses flourish around consumers. So if it is money you are after, then consumers are who you need and want. So in business in order for Company Q to get what they want and need, they will need to give the consumer what they want and need, social responsibility. Give back, it has always been said “It is better to give than to receive.” After careful review of Company Q's business actions, this company lacks social responsibility in many areas.

Corporate social responsibility incorporates environmental, social, and economic dimensions that provide leadership and differentiation opportunities for perceptive organizations. However,

Company X’s attitude towards being socially responsible is being clouded by its desire to maintain high profits. With its current actions, Company X is catering to a select group of its primary stakeholders such as the investors and shareholders. They seem to be forgetting that the customers, employees, and the community are also primary stakeholders. We will look into the scenario and dissect the company’s actions to show how they are alienating the community that will ultimately determine their reputation and profitability.

Becoming a socially responsible company is an ethical goal every business has a duty to strive for. As a small grocery store, Company Q currently has policies in place that do not create a socially responsible culture. Currently they have three main focuses that need to be addressed, the closing of stores in high crime areas, the high margins on health conscious and organic products, and the policy for day-old products. The current policies do not improve the companies reputation as a socially responsible company. In fact some of the actions negatively impact the company and its reputation.

The topic I choose was “Does business have any social responsibility (over and above turning a profit) and if it does what should such a responsibility amount to?”. I feel as though profits are a huge part of what a business should focus on, it should not be the only thing. I learned in one of my business classes that a corporation acts as a fictitious person. It bears the responsibility of any all decisions, good and bad. The benefit of a corporation versus sole proprietorship is that the business takes on the debt, not the sole proprietor. When the corporation goes belly up, the stockholders aren’t going belly up as well. So therefore, the corporation should be socially responsible, just as a person should be.

Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility in the corporate world are very important. By understanding business ethics and socially responsibility, companies can develop and implement a socially responsible plan. Organizations are no doubt an assembly line of different networks that are both complex and dynamic in nature which face various conflicts. With this, a qualitative paradigm needs to be used in order to ensure in-depth knowledge and understanding of the issues and challenges among business practices and how they can be handled. The influence of leadership and management decision making in an

The economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman’s article published in The New York Times Magazine in 1970 titled, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” (NYTimes, 1970) set tone for companies all across the country and all over the world. Companies start to turn in profits that shattered all charts and stock markets. Beginning in 1960s to 1990s, Capitalism had won the cold war with its arch rival the Soviet Union had withered away into the oblivion and the companies that turned focused in profits could not have been more right, or so everybody thought. With the latest economic recession in 2008, everything came tumbling down on the front door of once Wall Street and brought the world economy to halt. Today the social responsibility of Business is defined by economic development, the environment investment and human rights.

Is the deception of consumers worth making a profit? The Ford Pinto, popular car of the 1970s, made a profit off of a vehicle that endangered the lives of hundreds of people. In his essay “Pinto Madness” Mark Dowie, author and Pulitzer Prize nominee, exposed the unethical decisions made by Ford Motor Company. When it came to their customer’s safety and profit for the company, Ford made a decision that led to consequences their customers had to pay the price for. Should the business be held accountable for these actions? In his essay “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profit” Milton Friedman, powerful economist, discusses what a business should prioritize in the economic system. Friedman declares what a business is responsible for and the guidelines they must follow. Due to Friedman’s view, he would not have condoned the actions and decisions that the executives at Ford Motor Company took.

MF believed that a business itself cannot have any social responsibility. Only the people who own or are affiliated with the business can have any form of social responsibly. His article, A Friedman Doctrine--: The Social Responsibility of Business if to Increase Its Profits, outlines what this means for a business’s corporate executive. The corporate executive is the employee of the business owner and, therefore, is directly responsible to them. Friedman states that the corporate executive’s responsibility, “…generally, will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical customs (Friedman).” In this sense, the corporate executive’s role

There have been many changes in the way businesses are managed today than it was just a few years ago. Not too long ago, it used to be which product is the cheapest or which one is the most valuable, while nowadays these are not the important criteria in the product purchase process and there are many new factors that consumers consider. Many corporations understood these changes in society that evolved the Corporate Social Responsibility concept and its implications on the companies’ actions. New Balance, one of the biggest footwear companies in the world, was one of the first companies that saw the hidden potential in applying this concept. Despite the applications of social responsibility in the company’s daily activities, it faced difficulties in receiving recognition for its actions because of wrong actions that the company had made in regard of active communication with its stakeholders, difficulty in defining organizational understanding of what social responsibility is and more. In this case, I will present and analyze the actions that New Balance has to perform in order to have stronger and more successful CSR policy in the company.

Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) is about how companies make profits in an ethical way. Coca-Cola has adhered to this principle and had removed a chemical ingredient(brominated vegetable oil BVO) from its drink, a chemical associated with memory loss. BVO is banned in several other countries but allowed by FDA is US. Due to an online petition, thousands have pressured Coca-Cola to remove it. Coca-Cola listened and removed BVO. The stakeholders – consumers are cared for as Coca-Cola is doing their best to preserve health. A spokesman said:’We are concerned about the welfare of our consumers and their health remains our top priority.’

The expression "corporate social obligation" got to be across the board in the 1960s and has remained a term utilized aimlessly by numerous to cover legitimate and moral obligation all the more barely interpreted.

The responsibility of a business goes beyond just turning a profit, they also have an obligation to society. The stakeholders; consumers, employees, the community and the environment, all have a variety of needs that should be met by the company. These needs can include things such as safer more affordable products for the consumer, fair wages and good working conditions for the employee, or environmentally safe production practices that cut down on pollution for the community. Meeting these needs is known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and can have a profound impact on the company. Businesses, big and small, have an obligation to society to provide quality services while protecting the integrity of the environment and community surrounding them.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how a large progressive company operates in the corporate world as well as fulfills their corporate responsibility on a social level. While corporate responsibility is important, it is always viewed through the fiscal viability dimension of the maelstrom. The business case dominates the representation and operationalization of corporate responsibility. Due to the increased public sensitivity to corporate responsibility, the attitude has evolved from the unnecessary intrusion, through proactive operation focus, to compliance based; one residing within shareholder relations and legal. In this paper, I will continue to answer the question how a corporation respects the interests of its stakeholders and reflects those interests in its actions and accountability, as well as a summarization of their development towards corporate and social responsibility.