The society is changing continually and with it, the business model. Years ago, the main objective of a company was economic, and the way these objectives were achieved was not important. Nowadays, companies know that if they want to make a profit, they should have a good image, and they only can achieve this with ethics and actions for helping the community.The development of the concept of CSR rocketed in the recent years. Nowadays, in only 0, 28 seconds, Google can find more than 2 million of definitions about CSR, moreover million of documents about this, like "A guide to CSR in Europe".
One definition of CSR I come across in my research states: "Corporate Social Responsibility 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". This definition is used by World Business Council for Sustainable Development in its publication "Making good business sense", by Richard Holme and Phil Watts.
One example of CSR campaign that everyone is aware of is "Coca-Cola saves the polar bears".
With this campaign, Coca-Cola tried to help the polar bears survive against the effects of global warming. The company explained on their website how Coca-Cola was fighting against the global warming in through company practices.
But we don’t need just look at worldwide corporate players to detect the use of CSR actions. Companies like Tesco develops CSR too by helping schools with informatic and sport materials.
Nowadays, I think that CSR is the most important action that a company should practice, because I think that is important that the company should be seen to be helping the community in this time of crisis.
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ReplyDeleteI am afraid that CSR nowadays is about to lose its true meaning. It has turned out to be something like "philanthropy", however CSR is more than that. It is a whole strategy that a company should focus on and an overall way of thinking in an organizational level that could help the company adopt a more human "face" and come closer to its publics. CSR should not be considered as temporary charity by the companies, but as an effort to pay their social debt and help since they are able to. Therefore, I wonder....is any company loyal to its initial meaning today?
ReplyDeleteI agree to the first statement. In my opinion CSR is important for the company’s reputation and image management on the one hand but also for the stakeholders and the public on the other hand. CSR can be understood as legitimacy for companies to make business and to exist and it is necessary for publics and society in general and shareholders in specific to get justification what for their money has been spent.
ReplyDeleteBut what are the effects of CSR? If a company is engaged on different social or environmental projects on which a lot of money is invested, what does it mean specifically? That they produce high quality products or in contrary, the company has to hide something?
This fact is comparable to advertisement: The effect of advertisement is not always clear, as two analytical ways are possible. Firstly a product is good thus it is adverted or secondly the product is bad and due to that is has to be adverted.
Another point is, how can CSR been measured? On the budget which is spent on the projects in comparison with other companies or on the effects of CSR?