Target's Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility can be viewed as "economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time" (Gonzalez, 2015). Being socially responsible offers an organization many competitive advantages. Some of these benefits are a more talented workforce, new markets and customers, reliable supply chain solutions, and new products. Corporate social responsibility means that an organization does not only worry about its stakeholders, but it takes into account its employees and the public. Corporate Social Responsibility correlates with the ethical policies of corporations. An organization that comes to mind when thinking of corporate social responsible organizations is Target. Target is a company that is widely known for its products that it offers to the public. Target has attempted to dedicate more of its resources towards educational and environmental improvements in the areas where they have stores. This effort towards

Target is not as huge as Target, but they are from a global perspective similar to Wal-Mart. Due to the stakeholders not focusing solely on profits, they were able to improve the image of their organization. Customers that they would not have been able to reach are reachable through these positive programs that they have initiated. They “target their respective charitable and philanthropic activities around a particular issue or cause that will in turn support their business objectives.” (Gonzalez, 2015). This is commonly referred to as strategic philanthropy. This is done through them keeping everyone that may be affected by their programs involved. The people involved in these programs such as employees, owners, and the community are referred to as stakeholders. This is due to them being directly affected by these initiatives that the company chooses to