The Importance Of Corporate Social Responsibility

In recent years, many enterprises have been showing a keen interest in practicing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), as it helps companies to differentiate themselves from their competitors by generating awareness of their responsible practices. On the other hand there has also been a growing awareness in the business world at large is the concept of CSR and in companies that practice CSR. As a result there has been a growing perception among many enterprises that sustainable success and shareholder value is linked to socially responsible behavior. Companies have become conscious of the fact that contribution to sustainable development can be achieved by managing operations to enhance economic growth as well as promote consumer interests. While the World Business Council for Sustainable Development provides the most universal definition of CSR: it is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large, CSR is an still evolving concept that currently has a multi faced definition, but it is fast becoming a globally successful concept, and being seen as crucial in creating an attractive corporate image, providing competitive advantage and differentiation to the enterprise over its competition leading to business success.
The CSR trend has grown to be a methodology that integrates ethical and economic concerns into long term business values and company visions. It creates a direct link to business strategy and operations that help a firm establish better practices that lead to a better society. Vaitkevicus and Stukaite describe CSR as an engagement to improve t...

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...Lantos (2002) argues that if a company implements strategic social responsibility, it achieves positive publicity, improves its CI, and receives other benefits. This is why Lantos (2002) states that companies implement CSR in order to benefit from it, not to help stakeholders. Committing to a CSR cause requires a long term investment of the companies’ resources and the genuine will to do good. Although it is not an easy process to achieve a good CSR image, and one that requires a good long term strategy and a significant monetary investment, it is also a process that companies may no longer be able to avoid. In a world where there is a growing consciousness towards the environment, safe working conditions and ethically responsible decisions, companies will sooner or later have to devote time and resources towards becoming a socially responsible citizen of the world.