Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility in today’s society
Before five years, I came across a situation which led me to think about the importance and need of social responsibility by business enterprises. To start off giving a brief background, my brother was a fresh graduate from the school of architecture where he got his first individual contract in India. He had to design a mall that was planned to kick start after few years. The land where it was being constructed belonged to an old age home. It was a well-known home for old people to spend rest of their lives. Being his first project, my brother was really enthusiastic and gave in all his hard work. Later, he got to know about the old age home that was present there. He and his team were in a quandary situation of whether or not to appeal to their company’s executive board to discuss this issue. On one hand, they were pressurized by the board to complete the project in time, as millions of equities were at stake. Whereas, on the other hand, they were feeling a sense of immoral behavior on their part. His team came up with a proposal that was designed to support both, the mall and the old age home by retaining a part of this property with the latter. The proposal was rejected, and my brother and his team withdrew from that project. This experience was narrated to me by my brother, which drew me towards the need of business houses to be sensitive towards the society. Therefore, to further investigate this topic,
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.
Nowadays, many international companies take sustainable development seriously. They understand that sustainable development can enhance their quality of life and their reputation in public. Sustainable development is "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (Brundtland, 1987) Sustainability requires monitoring and managing all the person to ensure that our economy and society can continue to exist without destroying the social and natural environment during development. The sustainability includes three pillars, which are economic, social and environment, forming a triple bottom line. The triple bottom line demands that a company 's responsibility lies
There are also four perspectives of social responsibility that is key as well. The first responsibility is economic responsibility. This is the perspective that says the social responsibility of an organization is to make profits and provide attractive returns on investment. This is an important responsibility to their employees as well as their supplier’s employees because this brings in the profits which is what gives them the money to be able to pay their workers as well as keep the business running properly. The second responsibility is the legal responsibility. This is the perspective that the social responsibility of an organization is to obey laws and public policy. This is also an important responsibility because if the company doesn’t obey the laws and public policy, the state could shut the company down leaving hundreds of thousands of workers jobless. The third responsibility is ethical responsibility. This is the perspective that an organization should respond to the spirit as well as the letter of the law. Just as the second responsibility, this works just like it. Not following this responsibility could shut the business down, leaving many people jobless. The last responsibility is the philanthropic responsibility. This is the perspective that organizations
To what degree social responsibility should be considered in the conduct of business is an issue that has been debated extensively over time. While there are those who claim that businesses must fully embrace social responsibility, others are convinced that such a move would affect the ability of business entities to fully exploit the opportunities at their disposal. It should however be noted that in those instances where businesses neglect their ethical (and legal) mandate, the backlash is often severe.
Some business leaders are taking good moral decisions and the reason behind that idea is that the core part of their business strategy is to create mutual benefit for both wider society and business as well. The growing desire of top management is to find out ways to create mutual benefit for both the organizations and the stake holders but the public still believes that companies are greedy entities which make decisions only in their self-interest, even at the cost of greater public welfare. It is the utmost obligation of the companies to discern the social issues while making the decisions (Yashiro, Yoshida and Suzuki, no date; Godwin, 2006; Schwab, 1996; Godwin, 2008; Werhane, 1998; Werhane, 2002; Heath, 2008; Mehalik and Gorman, 2006).
Many companies think that corporate social responsibility is a peripheral issue for their business and
there were internal failures, more could have been done to ensure that the directors who were not acting ‘illegally’ acted with more consideration for their non-shareholders.
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.
“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” The past century has shown us the atrocious influence of military power on global politics, but now for many states, the sense of fear is derived from economic power. Through increased globalization and interdependence of trade, multinational corporations ' (MNC) impact on global politics has undoubtedly strengthened. In the peripheral world, poverty is still prevalent. It not exclusive to the fact that they don’t have the resources to pull themselves out of it, but because of the continued cycles of exploitative systems placed by MNCs.Their involvement abroad, especially in developing countries has hindered countries development and exploited their
What many organizations learn today is that forward-looking innovation and competitive advantage can be obtained from intertwining social, as well as, environmental considerations into business from the very beginning. Through this process, businesses can come up with the next generation of ideas, employees and markets. Therefore, corporate social responsibility is a commitment to improve public welfare through flexible business practices, along with contributions of corporate resources. Corporate social responsibility is all about ethical values and acquiescence with legal requirements, which go hand in hand with respect for the community, the environment and the people. To the extent that a business is concerned, social corporate responsibility is corporate citizenship. In this context, a business needs to be a good neighbor to the people, the environment and the community. An organization should be socially responsible within its host community (Cramer & Bergmans 2003, p. 142).
The paper addresses the concept of business ethics and law of Corporate Social Responsibility. The study of behaviour of the organisations should include how responsible it is towards the community and its employees, customers and investors.
Generally, organizations are concerned with giving back to the society in order to appreciate the contributions of the host community to their growth, sustainability and survival according to Oko & Agbonifoh (2014). Using this as the basis of their operations, corporate alertness is increasingly being given to corporate social responsibility philosophies. Most business organization thus work on the idea of maximizing the positive effects of their operation on the society as the negative impacts of these operation are minimized - Farrell and Fraedrich (1997). This is the thrust of corporate social responsibility as considered an obligation among businesses in the advanced societies of the globe.
The perceptivity of sustainability is both in the sense of achieving long-term success and as survivability of a corporation (Zink, Steimle & Fischer 2008). Dunphy, Griffiths and Benn (2003) conceive corporations as channels of social purpose, constructed within society to attain useful social objectives. Henceforth, corporate social responsibility commits a significant role towards the sustainability of corporations. Both corporate social responsibilities and sustainability, and its related concepts influence all aspects of business. Chandler and Werther (2010) acknowledge the understanding of corporate social responsibilities as an
Campbell (2007, p. 952) based on the review of CSR proposes that firms are less likely to perform in a socially responsible way when when they are facing weak financial performance and are operating in the environment where there is limited likelihood for short term profitability.
Corporate social responsibility is paramount in any organization. It involves the need for a corporate organization to go beyond what may be required by regulators or environmental protection groups and manage the business processes to produce an overall positive impact on society. Corporate take it upon themselves and come up with an initiative to assess and take responsibility for the company's effects on the environment and impact on social welfare. This may involve incurring short-term costs that do not provide an immediate financial benefit to the company, but instead promotes positive social and environmental change (Crowther & Aras 2008). Our founder Bill Gates has set an exemplary model through the creation of Bill Gates & Melinda Foundation that has lifted the lives of many poverty stricken people throughout the world. It is in line with this noble initiative by our founder that we are working to uphold the precedents set by our founder that we are setting out to launch the proposed (CRS) dubbed “The Green Hills Initiative”.