Friday 2 October 2009

What is Corporate Social Responsibility?

Businesses are built around society. They produce what is good in our society, while in the same time, they also cause a great harm, as pollution, layoffs, industrial accidents, and other consequences. For this reason, businesses are largely responsible for creating wealth and driving progress within society because they cannot act alone. They need customers who use their products and generate profits. Hence, organisations (whatever it is called) have to interact with society, and even affecting governments, non-profits and other stakeholders.

To meet this need, organisations have to address their relationships with its stakeholders, and these stakeholders are heterogeneous. Therefore, the strategy that can be applied is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It links to ethical values, transparency, corporate governance, environmental concerns, employee relations, compliance with legal requirements and overall respect for the communities in which the organisations operate.




From the video, we can view that strategic CSR is concerned with both the ends of economic viability and the means of being socially responsible. Thus, we can conclude that CSR is essentials in building relationships amongst different stakeholders in order to be sustainable and survive the competition. However, we need to know what is the reason organisations have to undertake CSR as part of their long-term plan?

CSR is important because it influences all aspects of company’s operations. It gains trust from all stakeholders, such as, consumers want to buy products they trust, suppliers want to form business partnership with companies they can rely on, and employees want to work for companies they respect, and so on. CSR allows companies to maximise their commitment to their ultimate stakeholders, who benefit most when all of these groups’ needs are being met. Furthermore, the businesses are most likely to succeed in this competitive global environment if they are able to balance the often conflicting interests of their multiple stakeholders.


Reference :
Werther, W. B. & Chandler, D. (2006). Strategic corporate social responsibility: stakeholders in a global environment (pp.1-15). California: Thousand Oaks.

No comments:

Post a Comment