Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate social responsibility refers to the non-profit making investments that a business organization engages in as a way of giving back to the community that hosts that particular business organization. CSR has been viewed by some people as the effort made by business organizations to realize a balance between the social, political and economic business forces without failing to fulfill the needs of the various stakeholders attached to the business who include customers, shareholders, employees, the government, and middlemen. A number of studies in the USA and the United Kingdom tend to encourage corporate social responsibility by their constant nodes by respondents. Many researches claim that the customers develop positive feeling of firms who participate in CSR and support a cause.
A lot of papers have been done on the topic corporate social responsibility and none of them has agreed with another in a fixed definition of CSR. In a complex analysis done on the definition of corporate social responsibility, Matteo and Moon (2008) comes to a conclusion that there lacks a common definition of CSR because CSR talks about very many related concepts. They further conclude that CSR is an emerging business model which changes overtime with new strategies and still needs more research done about it. To add on this point, CSR participation requires an organization to adhere to legal requirements set up by the government and go beyond the company’s goals of maximizing shareholders profit.
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Corporate Social Irresponsibility
Herzig and Moon (2013) relate corporate social irresponsibility to the concept of CSR which they define as the responses of business organizations towards the expectations of the society that hosts that particular business, Herzig and Moon (2013) further nail it that failing to meet such expectations of the society is corporate social irresponsibility. Irresponsibility on business organization may appear in so many forms including bribery, corruption, social injustices and environmental degradation all brought about by the daily activities of the business. Failure to do something to redeem all these will amount to corporate social irresponsibility. Other organizations that participate in CSR tend to blind host communities and stakeholders so they do not see their irresponsible behaviors. Perks et al (2013) points that such organizations sway the attention of the communities and other stakeholders by activities that are of less importance.
Various scholars have regarded various activities to depict corporate social irresponsibility by business organizations. These activities that are engaged in by many organizations are among the ethical behaviors that in one way or another hurt the business stakeholders. One good example is tax avoidance which involves tax evasion by an organization. Bid-rigging and engaging in corruption through bribery as done by some organizations to win tenders counts as another irresponsible act by organizations. False advertisements, posing poor working conditions for workers, pollution of essential resources in the society such as water as well as harboring economic inequality are also examples of irresponsible behaviors that business organizations engage.
Corporates have no right to ignore their responsibilities
Business organizations should not ignore corporate social responsibility, instead should strive to score highly in the administration of giving back to the community and/ or maximizing their responsibilities to the stakeholders of the business besides the shareholder. An irresponsible business organization stands the risk of facing criticisms from its consumers and even suppliers for developing unethical character. Such criticisms and lack of support from other companies and consumers is likely to put the company in legal wars with consumer societies and suppliers. Such business organizations, by giving e deaf ear to the criticism may as well end up in legal woes as a result corruption, tax evasion or fraud cases.
Moreover, corporates should pay attention to CSR when their customers show their care for it. This means that they should strive to guard their ethical reputation at all times because their customers expect nothing short of it. The current era of time makes available all sorts of information about A Company’s record on environment pollution vis-à-vis their subsequent move to redeem any sort of pollution. Additionally, technology presents social media where a company’s reputation can be shuddered beyond repair over a very short period of time and resistance staged by consumers. This therefore means that companies cannot afford to ignore some aspects of CSR that puts their reputation on radar.
Businesses should value its employees as one of very important stakeholders in the company. Corporate social responsibility presents one of the most key drivers to employee engagement. There are a number of researches which claim that employees of young ages tend to make decisions on remaining in the organization based on the organization’s obligation to the community. This is a clear indication and message to organizations who rubbish CSR that their commitment to their respective responsibilities will help them retain their young workers and therefore retain talent.
Unfortunately, there are organizations that disregard corporate social responsibilities and hold the amorphous belief that ignoring responsibilities would help a company achieve its short term bottom line. Such organizations pose the argument that engaging in responsibilities heightens their expenses and thereby cutting short their expected profits. Others argue that environmental degradation is unavoidable and organizations should not be pinned to rectify or undertake more precautions than they do to a natural course. Additionally, some organizations ignore their responsibilities citing survival in business. They move to evade taxes and involve in tax fraud with the excuse of surviving in business.
References
Herzig, C., & Moon, J. (2013). Discourses on corporate social ir/responsibility in the financial sector. Journal of Business Research , 66 (10), 1870-1880.
Matten, D., & Moon, J. (2008). “Implicit” and “explicit” CSR: A conceptual framework for a comparative understanding of corporate social responsibility. Academy of management Review , 33 (2), 404-424.
Perks, K. J., Farache, F., Shukla, P., & Berry, A. (2013). Communicating responsibility-practicing irresponsibility in CSR advertisements. Journal of Business Research , 66 (10), 1881-1888.
