Managing Corporate Responsibility in Businesses

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Table of Contents

Introduction
CSR Strategy
Corporate Identity and Ethics
Stakeholders Engagement
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Corporate social responsibility is one of the most important aspects within business environment. Business practices have continued to grow leading to positive and negative effects within social and environmental dimensions. Such demands from businesses have created major concerns within public and private sectors with environmental field.

However, several organizational programs have been built with focus on protecting environment within global platform. This has led to formation and signing of agreements such as Kyoto Protocol as well as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Organization’s Corporate Social responsibility entails various aspects touching on economic, legal as well as ethical standards. There are also consumer expectations based on uncompromised standards within specified time period. Various actions by organizations in the process of undertaking their operations requires firm laws capable of serving interests of stakeholders (McWilliams and Siegel, 2001, p. 117).

Due to such implications organizations should not focus so much on personal interests but rather on benefits of their actions to social and natural environment.

Basically, most organization’s response to social matters is geared towards making profits and building strong relationships with stakeholders. However, environmental effects as a result of various activities should drive the company towards responsible actions rather than economic gain (McWilliams and Siegel, 2001, p. 117).

CSR Strategy

Business organizations around the world are required to meet the needs of their current consumers without jeopardizing the ability of the successive generations to efficiently meet their needs. There is need for organizations to be responsible for their operations and various impacts on the entire society.

At the same time there is need for business corporations to apply principles of sustainability in all their business operations (Baker, 2002). Such activities reflect organization’s voluntary considerations within social and environmental domains based on their business operations. There is need for such businesses to responsibly cater for the needs of their stakeholders.

Experiencing economic prosperity at the expense of social and environment considerations is unacceptable. In order to keep safe path and deliver appropriately to both private and public beneficiaries, there is need for reshaping organization’s frameworks, rules as well as business models.

This calls for frequent revision of both long- and short-term goals for the purposes of staying ahead of constant changes within the global market (Utting, 2005).

The kind of relationships organizations enjoys with employees and other key stakeholders determines the level of its success. However, major business decisions leading to various forms of transformations calls for emphasis to be laid on sustainable development.

These should be based on established organizational leadership. However various strategies are required for the purposes of dealing with social needs, environment and business imperatives.

Organizations which consider their operations as having significant effects on the environment and society, usually reorganizes their goals and principles at the economic, social and ecological levels. This encourages operations beyond organization’s boundaries (Strike et al., 2006).

Corporate responsibility is also considered vital and necessary in addressing topics based on business ethics, corporate social performance, corporate citizenship as well as stakeholder management. CSR addresses various aspects used in defining interdependencies between organizations and society at large.

However, despite many corporations aiming at contributing to better society, the challenge still remains on translating their goals to reality (Waldman et al., 2006).

Corporate Identity and Ethics

Personality of any business organization depends on essential character as well as changes in its business values. Such corporate identity reveals the reality of company’s objectives in spite of what they advocate for (Nan and Heo, 2007). Corporate identity is at times created through branding which acts as very important focal point to businesses since its contribution towards their competitive advantage is eminent.

Current business environment demands that companies should first of all focus on ethical responsibilities which on many occasions run at par with economic and legal responsibilities. This is since strong business foundation is built on such principles (Werther & Chandler, 2006).

Corporate social responsibility also presents an avenue through which organizations can match corporate operations with societal values. This makes ethical behaviours a prerequisite for business operations. Ethical behaviours portrayed by any organization presents true reflection of its culture and shared set of values as well as guiding principles.

There is need for organizations to give genuine assurance to stakeholders concerning level of effects of their activities (Martinson, 2000). At the same time it is important that organizations realign all their activities to conform to environmental regulations used within the global market.

Each company should detail various environmental and social activities they observe as well as processes followed in achieving them. Consequently, concrete company principles ensure that all set-backs within the environment are dealt with amicably.

This should range from the nature of advertisements used within the market, which portrays the company’s appropriate image. Modification of any process or product should meet both consumer and environmental expectations without any compromise (McWilliams and Siegel, 2001, p. 117).

Stakeholders Engagement

There are several contributors involved in the practice of Corporate Social Responsibility within business environment. Business corporations play major roles within the society and these calls for new leadership roles and tactics which at times come into conflict with key stakeholders. Understanding on the relationship between companies and stakeholders requires concrete engagement in CSR.

Amongst key stakeholders are the shareholders, consumers, the environment and society at large. Interactions between leaders and stakeholders can be explained through relationship models.

There are possibilities of leaders managing CSR activities and producing good results based on the extent to which they apply CSR activities. Extending CSR activities beyond boundaries by engaging stakeholders in decision making activities as well as maintaining good communication channels helps in building company’s reputation (Waddock, 2007).

In most instances, crises experienced within public domain are usually a reflection of the extent to which coordinated activities within organizations are implemented. There should be detailed enforcement of public policies for the purposes of ensuring societal safety.

However, much emphasis should be placed on areas with dense human activities since much responsibility allocation is required. Such includes various aspects as public administration from the company’s perspective (Shropshire and Hillman, 2007).

Stakeholders should be able to directly and indirectly benefit from the whole process of exchanging goods and services within the market. Several aspects of marketing should be scrutinized including domains surrounding green-washing. Marketing and sales department within organizations needs to recognize as well as identify market development and various demands from customers.

The issues surrounding dynamic pricing requires close scrutiny since they are determined by various factors such as duration between production, sales and consumption. For the sake of applying ethical principles, businesses need to adopt optimal pricing during operations. This ensures that key elements required for sustainable business operations are maintained.

Conclusion

Various measures implemented by organizations have the capability of identifying whether organization’s strategy, implementation and execution of various plans are appropriate bottom-line and could lead towards development. There are usually several processes involved in analyzing success of CSR application.

First there is stage of rapid growth which focuses on increase in sales and customer turnout, then there is, sustainable stage which is characterized by those measures capable of evaluating organization effectiveness. This is based on the nature of relationship between the company and stakeholders. The final stage is referred to as harvest stage which is characterized by various measures of financial analysis and credibility.

Additionally, it is important for organizations to focus on knowledge management system as part of CSR. This forms one of the basic units within an organization. Such systems always appear in different forms depending on company’s level of operations.

However, it is the responsibility of the organization to determine and choose activities appropriate for both its growth and community development. However, efficiency of any knowledge management system depends on its ability to share information rationally across boundaries of the organization.

This makes such unit necessary in the management of CSR since it influences coordination of numerous activities between company, stakeholders and environment.

Application of such system by the management has enables efficiency in relaying important data and information to both public and private stakeholders. As part of efficient management system inefficiency in information transmissions may result into green-washing which is normally viewed negatively by consumers (McDonnell and Bartlett, 2009).

References

Baker, S 2002, “The theoretical ground for public relations practice and ethics: A Koehnian analysis, “Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 35, no.3, pp.191–205.

Martinson, D. L 2000, “Ethical decision making in public relations: What would Aristotle say?” Public Relations Quarterly, vol. 3 no. 45, pp.18–21.

McDonnell, J & Bartlett, J 2009, “Marketing to change Public Opinion on Climate Change: A case Study,” International Journal of Climate change, vol. 1 no. 3, pp. 63-70.

McWilliams, A & Siegel, D 2001, “Corporate social responsibility: A theory of the firm perspective,” Academy of Management Review, vol. 1 no. 26, pp.117-127.

Nan, X & Heo, K 2007, “Consumer responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives,” American Academy of Advertising, Vol. 2, No. 36, pp 63–74.

Shropshire, C & Hillman, A 2007, “A longitudinal study of significant change in stakeholder management,” Business and Society, Vol. 1, No.46, pp. 63–67.

Strike, V, Gao, J & Bansal, P 2006, “Being good while being bad: Social responsibility and the international diversification of U.S. firms,” Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 7 No.37, pp. 850–862.

Utting, P 2005, “Corporate responsibility and the movement of business,” Development in Practice, Vol. 3 No. 14, pp. 375–388.

Waddock, S 2007, “Leadership integrity in a fractured knowledge world,” Academy of Management Learning & Education, Vol. 4, No. 6, pp. 543–557.

Waldman, D, Siegel, S & Javidan, M 2006,”Components of CEO transformational leadership and corporate social responsibility,” Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 8, No. 43, pp. 1703–1725.

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