“Corporate Social Responsibility is a hard-edged business decision. Not because it is a nice thing to do or because people are forcing us to do it because it is good for our business” – Niall Fitzerald, Former CEO, Unilever
This quote came from the sustainability page of Unilever website. This company’s website also has statistics about what the firm is doing to plan for sustainable growth in the future and how they are changing to become more environmentally friendly. Additionally, Unilever has published statistics detailing various safety, environmental, and social performance indicators relative to their industry. Clearly, this is a firm that deeply cares about its environmental and social sustainability efforts and performance. One would
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Definition of CSR
General definition of CSR:
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept by which organizations take the interests of society into consideration by holding themselves responsible for the consequences of their activities to the environment, the community, their customers and employees affected by all the operations of their business. This responsibility normally goes beyond that required by law. The resulting tendency is that of organizations actively and voluntarily helping their employees and the local and wider community to improve their quality of life.
Corporate Social Responsibility relates to a business long-term approach that addresses the needs of communities, people and their employers. CSR provides to sustainable development by delivering economic, social and environmental benefits for all stakeholders. CSR is a concept with many definitions and practices. The way it is implemented differs greatly for each company and country. However, CSR is a very broad concept that addresses many and various topics such as human rights, corporate governance, health and safety, environmental effects, working conditions and contribution to economic development.
Corporate sustainability
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The importance of CSR
Nowadays, the high level of competitions within business leads to customers’ decisions. They make decisions not only based on company’s profit but also how much good a corporation is doing outside of the workplace and how they are positively impacting their community.
Public imagine:
If a company is heavily involved in the practice of donating funds or goods to local non-profit organizations and schools, consumers are more likely to use their product. Or if a corporation takes great care to ensure the materials used in its products are environmentally safe and the process is sustainable, this would be a better imagine for companies in public.
Customer engagement:
Using CSR can help your company engage with your customers in new ways. If a company is using a good Corporate Social Responsibility, it can often be an easier way to talk to your customers. This is an underused tool for business-to-business company communication.
Employee
A business should make sure its methods of production are not negatively affecting its employees and that all the people in the business are happy and willing to work. Also, a business should make sure that its methods of production are not producing any waste on land or water or air pollution, for these negatively affect society. A business that cares about it’s influence on the environment, and its consumers is bound to make a difference. For example: General Mills wants to reduce the amount of energy it uses. In order to do this, they had energy monitors installed into some of their equipment in one of their manufacturing plants. The result: General Mills saved around six hundred thousand dollars (James). Profit can be obtained faster by a business that is looked upon as a positive influence on the environment and its employees. Overall, a business should be careful about how it produces its products and think about society’s health before it makes a decision, for if it doesn’t, the liability for damage is a much greater price to
Corporate social responsibilities (CSR) have a different meaning in different company but in my view CSR is the concept which is the ability one of the companies can do for society. As the company responsibilities toward the society and environment in the way operate their business. CSR is about how companies manage the business processes to produce an overall positive impact on society. CSR also known as a “corporate citizenship” and with do that CSR is not provide an immediate financial benefit to the company but promote positive social and environmental change. (www.investopedia.com/terms/c/corp-social-responsibility). CSR is a high profile nation which the business world perceives as a strategic (Economist, 2008; Porter & Kramer, 2006)
Corporate Social Responsibility is the obligation from corporations to utilize their resources to aid and benefit the larger society. The four components of CSR are economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic. Social Responsibility is a fundamental force in the wealth creation process. If correctly demonstrated, CSR should heighten competitiveness and boost the value of wealth creation to society. A company's CSR Initiatives directly represent who the company is and what it believes it. The m...
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the set of regulations that an organization makes to protect and increase the society in which it functions. There are three areas of social responsiblity: Organizational stakeholders, the natural environment and general social welfare.
Corporate Social responsibility is the care and concern shown by the businesses towards society and carrying out activities by which the society can be benefited.
According to Mike Peng, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the consideration and response to issues beyond the narrow economic, technical, and legal requirements of the firm to accomplish social benefits along with traditional economic gains the firm seeks. CSR is a way in which a company seeks to achieve a balance between profit, environmental concerns and social imperatives. This is known as the ‘Triple-Botto...
- Manoj Chakravarti, G M - Corporate Affairs & Corporate Head - Social Responsibility, Titan Industries Limited in 2004.
Stuart Hart, in a business article, discusses the tough task for companies to make a sustainable global ec...
CSR is a concept where company involves in social and environmental in their business operations. This is done to achieve a balance of economic, environmental and social obligations.in simple terms giving a hand for those who are not capable of achieving with their objectives and attending to them so that they could make those objectives a reality. This could improve organizations cooperate image which would also leads to attain a high market share.
CSR is one of most important parts of every company. Acting as socially responsible is must for winning the race of competition. In this report, in the 1st part I tried to show a brief about CSR, its history and how people respond towards CSR. Then I have chosen Unilever, a famous FMCG company for the analysis. Then I tried to find out the CSR activities of Unilever all over the world, its corporate strategy and the contribution of CSR activities to corporate strategy. In the last part a SWOT analysis and some recommendations are given for more clarifications. I hope that this report will be able to give a clear view about CSR and its contribution to corporate strategy.
... shows that customers are more willing to demonstrate loyalty to firms that also show social and environmental responsibility. Firms that fail to provide ethical responsibilities will lose their customer base and face rising market costs. Of late boards have even been set up to ensure that those acting against set standards shall be charged accordingly The policy of putting people before profits must be enforced to face a healthy business environment in the long run.
The arguments for and against corporate social responsibility have captured two points of view. Those who believe that organizations should not be concerned about social responsibility base many of their arguments on the costs involved and whether organizations should shoulder those costs on behalf of society. And those who are in favor feel that organizations benefit from society and, therefore, have an obligation to improve it. Although there is no universal agreement, surveys and other reports express that many organizations are, becoming increasingly active in addressing social
There are now several concepts of CSR and its definition, along with the meaning across corporations. In my opinion, and according with our textbook in page 11. CSR is about a particular set of business and strategies that deal with social issues. In addition, we can clearly perceive that CSRs application along corporations has increase in the past decade due to the several local, and international regulations in order to enforce business to act responsible.
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...
The sustainability of ecosystems on which the global economy depends must be guaranteed. And the economic partners must be satisfied that the basis of exchange is equitable” (World). This quote demonstrates the complexities of sustainability. Another thing corporations should focus on when trying to be sustainable is their environmental impact. Annie Leonard in her book The Story of Stuff says that companies can significantly reduce their toll on the environment by changing their design. The design determines “the amount of energy used in making and using the product,” “the length of the product’s life span” and “its ability to be recycled” (Leonard). All these things determine the amount of resources a company must use, so simply changing a product’s design is one way a company can have a large impact on the sustainability of the environment in which it operates. One example of this is that “Wal-Mart attributed more that $100 million of its 2009 revenue to a decision to switch to a recyclable variety of cardboard in shipments” which it sells to a recycler instead of paying to send it to a landfill