Corporate Social Responsibility: Environmental Concerns

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Recommended: Concept of stakeholder theory

The question of whether or not corporations should have the responsibility to keep environmental sustainability is an important one, because human life is based on environment. In this paper, I argue that even though environment is not the stakeholder to corporations, it has the right equal to persons that it should be protected and well taken care of in the business activities. Due to the shortcomings of the arguments for environment as stakeholders, I will argue for the necessity of a more flexible framework for discussion of this topic, in which sustainability should be embedded in stakeholder theory rather than being treated as a marginal issue.

I need to define the terms that I use in my following arguments. A corporation is an association of individuals to obtain profit, and corporations can only act through people. A person is an individual with rights and duties. Environment is something that provides basic conditions for humans to live and it is affected by human actions as well. Environment is as important as humans. A sustainable business works based on three elements: people, planet and profit; it is a business that carries social responsibility, which is to take care of the environment and the society (people). Sustainability is an ability or capacity of something to be maintained or to sustain itself, in other words, human and environment sustainability depends on humans and how humans treat the environment.

Corporations have responsibility to take care of their employees, because employees are persons with rights and duties, of course they are the ones to make profit for the business. Both employees and shareholders are the stakeholders of the business. They have rights and duties as persons; they have a commo...

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...le persons that have rights and duties, and the actions of a corporations symbol a group of persons. When the environment provides the resources, humans have the responsibility to protect and take care of nature. Environment deserves the equal right as humans, it should weigh the same as human stakeholders; thus, sustainability should be embedded in stakeholder theory.

Works Cited

Bendheim, C. L., Waddock, S., & Graves, S. (1998). Determining best practice in corporate-stakeholder relations using data envelopment analysis: An industry level study. Business and Society, 37(3), 306–338.

"Corporation." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.

Phillips, R., Robert; Edward, Freeman. Stakeholder Theory and Organizational Ethics. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 2003. Print.

"What Is Sustainability?" What Is Sustainability? N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.

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