What would an even more complete CSR engagement look like?
In recent years, many corporations in the US and in Europe has made efforts to include Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as part of their decision making process. In Europe, the European Commission, a political body has been a leading advocate for CSR and has set the widely accepted definition of CSR (Aßländer, 2011). The European Commission view CSR as companies not just fulfilling the legal compliance and regulations, but advancing human capital, the environment and the relations with all stakeholders. In the green paper written by the commission initiates a debate on how the European Union (EU) can further promote CSR globally (European Commission, 2011). The case study on Host Europe is an excellent example of the European Commission’s vision of corporations taking the steps toward CSR. Looking at Host Europe, the company has invested great deal in CSR as it relate to energy use and the green data initiative. At the end of their initiative for anew green data center, Host Europe had established server energy-efficiency by 75 percent. Even with such as great success, Host Europe saw other measures that could further improve CSR. Host Europe sustainability report identified need for further sustainability in areas of work gender ratio, improving employee awareness, green IT and supply chain responsibility. Even though Host Europe’s gender ratio (less than 20 percent of employees were women) depicts the industry average, it strived to encourage a level playing field for women applicant without using gender as a decision criterion for hiring practices. Another area of improvement related to employees is CSR awareness. Host Europe sees a need to bring ecological awarene...
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...G. & Crowther, D. (2009). Corporate Sustainability Reporting: A Study in Disingenuity?
Journal of Business Ethics, 87(1), 279-288.
Boudier, F. & Bensebaa, F. (2011). Hazardous Waste Management and Corporate Social Responsibility: Illegal Trade of Electrical and Electronic Waste. Business and Society Review, 116, 29–53.
European Commission: 2001, Green Paper Promoting aEuropean Framework for Corporate Social Responsibility C OM(2001) 366 (Commission of the European Communities, Brussels). Retrieved from http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/com/2001/com2001_0366en01.pdf
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Tate, W. L., Ellram, L. M., & Kirchoff, J. F. (2010). Corporate Social Responsibility Reports: A Thematic Analysis Related to Supply Chain Management. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 46(1), 19-44.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the way a corporation achieves a balance between its economic, social, and environmental responsibilities in its operations so as to address shareholder and other stakeholder expectations. In general, when firms hold this wider encouraging role on the public by being engaged with stakeholders, a variety of profit can be produced for both company and the stakeholders. A key inclination is the combination of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) into the organization strategy, culture, mission and communications. By incorporating corporate citizenship into the company it is no longer an additional “nice thing to do” or something made to obey laws or regulations. Instead, corporate responsibility has become something business leaders and workforce want to engage in, frequently because executives who believe in the long-term see business profit. The four types of social responsibilities a...
Lantos, GP, 2001, ‘The boundaries of strategic corporate social responsibility’, The Journal of Consumer Marketing, vol. 18, no. 7, pp. 595-639.
Hohnen, P. (2007). Corporate Social Responsibility An Implementation Guide for Business. Winnipeg: International Institute for Sustainable Development. Retrieved January 22, 2014, from http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2007/csr_guide.pdf
Corporate social responsibility is globally defined as operating a business in a way that meets or exceeds the ethical, legal, commercial and public expectations that society has of business. The concern of CSR has drastically increased over the last two decades. It has enhanced interactions between governments, businesses, society and internationally. In the past, businesses primarily focus themselves with the economic results of their decisions. Now, businesses must also reflect on the legal, ethical, moral and social consequences of their decisions. Corporate Social Responsibility is no longer defined by how much money a company contributes to charity, but by its overall involvement in activities that improve the quality of people’s lives.
An organization’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) drives them to look out for the different interests of society. Most business corporations undertake responsibility for the impact of their organizational pursuits and various activities on their customers, employees, shareholders, communities and the environment. With the high volume of general competition between different companies and organizations in varied fields, CSR has become a morally imperative commitment, more than one enforced by the law. Most organizations in the modern world willingly try to improve the general well-being of not only their employees, but also their families and the society as a whole.
McWilliams, A., & Siegel, D. (2001). Corporate social responsibility: A theory of the firm perspective. Academy of management review, 26(1), 117-127.
The term Corporate Social Responsibility refers to a company’s responsibility to provide a benefit to the society the company affects. Corporate social responsibility incorporates dimensions of corporate responsibility, and corporate policy which include a company’s policy to hire minority or disabled workers, or taking a stance on social and political issues that benefit the community. The social portion of corporate social responsibility includes corporate charitable business contributions and expands on this common social business practice by invoking corporate social initiatives. For example, as a policy, Wal-Mart grocery store managers purchase as much produce and goods from local farmers and distributors they can as opposed to relying on national food distributors. This example of a corporate social initiative provides a greater benefit to the economy of the society surrounding Wal-Mart stores than if Wal-Mart made only charitable contributions to a food bank within the local area. Environmental responsibility is a business’s responsibility to decrease its carbon footprint and produce green products. The trend to produce green products has come into effect since global warming has become a greater concern in the world over the past decade. Reducing the carbon footprint and making green products may increase a company’s cost, but the company can charge more for its products and services to offset the increased cost. Nickels, J. McHugh, and S. McHugh give an example of the Ciba Specialty Chemicals Company, a Swiss textile dye manufacturer who charges more for its dyes than other dye companies because Ciba’s dyes “require less salt than traditional dyes”, and are therefore more expensive to produce (Nickels, J McHugh, S...
Zadek, S. (2004). The Path to Corporate Responsibility. Harvard Business Review, 82(12), 125-132. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=15242507&site=ehost-live&scope=site
In recent years, companies are becoming socially responsible and now stakeholders almost expect a company to have CSR policies. Therefore, in twentieth century, corporate social responsibility (CSR) became an important development in public life (Barnett, ND).Corporate social responsibility is defined as “the ways in which an organisation exceeds the minimum obligations to stakeholders specified through regulation and corporate governance” (Johnson, Schools and Whittington, N.D cited in March, 2012). Stakeholders can be defined as “those individuals or groups who depend on the organisation to fulfil their own goals and on whom, in turn, the organisation depends” (Johnson, Schools and Whittington, N.D cited in March, 2012). There are many purposes for this essay, the first purpose is to descried the key principles of corporate social responsibility and explain their importance for stakeholders. Secondly, is to show how far this company follows those principles in order to be accountable to at least three of its stakeholders. In this essay, three stakeholders, environment, customers and employees will be evaluated respectively and the key principles of the stakeholders will be examined.
Turker, D. (2009). Measuring corporate social responsibility: a scale development study. Journal of Business Ethics 85, 411-427.
A corporations CSR should be shaped in order to fit the goals of the corporation, although every corporation’s CSR should differ, since most have different goals and different communities behind them. The CSR should be molded into fitting the corporation’s goals in order to make it easier on the corporation in giving back to the community while achieving its goals. For example, a corporation located in a desert wishes to be more efficient, by reducing water usage it is not only creating lower costs, which result in higher revenue, but also helps the community by not taking up so much water. Taking this into consideration, it is critical that the corporation goals and values are established and clear throughout the corporation, they should be developed by the board or directors and CEO, and the highest managerial level should stress their importance to the rest of the corporation. By making the goals and values at the top branch of the corporate hierarchy, it will be simpler for the corporates community to develop in order to nurture those goals and values. Therefore, a corporation can reach the “shared-value,” a value for both its shareholders and community in a simpler manner that can result benefiting the corporation in the end as well. Throughout the article many examples are given of actual corporations that have benefited and changed their CSR in order to fit their goals, therefore, providing solid proof that these methods work. Nevertheless, as acknowledged by the author’s themselves, most of the corporations taken into consideration where one’s that Harvard CSR students were employed
Bowie, (1991) New directions in corporate social responsibility - moral pluralism and reciprocity, Business Horizons, 34, 4 pp.56-65
Corporate Social Responsibility is an organisation’s obligation to serve the company’s own interest and the one’s of the society. Moreover, Corporate Social Responsibility has a definition of a concept where the companies integrate social and the environmental concerns into their own business operation and also on a basis of voluntary with their interactions they have with the stakeholders. Corporate Social Resp...
Now-a-days it is considered that CSR is one of the major concerns of organization’s business ethics. Companies increasingly increase their corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethical management accepting the positive impact on the bottom line. The vast bulk of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies publish sustainability reports unfolding their program challenges and achievements. These pre-emptive efforts can pr...
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a very familiar term in today’s world. Most of the successful companies try to be ethical and socially responsible toward their stakeholders. Because becoming ethical and socially responsible gains a lot in terms of profit or capturing more market share (Aras and Crowther,2009). This socially responsible approach is paved by the CSR activities of the companies which has a great contribution to their corporate strategy of winning the customers’ mind. In this assignment, the pros and corn of CSR activities of a particular organization a...