Many organizations around the world spend a lot of time and energy on corporate citizenship initiatives and programming which is also referred to as corporate social responsibility. Corporate citizenship includes a variety of activities ranging from donating cash or gifts to volunteering programs. Corporate citizenship and volunteerism are very important aspects of an organization. They both aid business organizations by strengthening employee performance and retention, they strengthen the corporation’s public image and they strengthen relationships with external investors (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2015). The purpose of this proposal is to understand the concept of corporate citizenship as well as to analyze and explain the benefits associated with volunteerism on an organizational, personal, and community level. A thorough online based research has been carried out to find out the benefits about volunteerism, corporate citizenship and the references are cited.
Corporate citizenship is the recognition that a business organization or a corporation has social, cultural and environmental responsibility to the community in which it operates. It is also the recognition that a business organization or a corporation has an economic and financial responsibility to its shareholders (Plewa, Conduit, Quester & Johnson, 2015). On the other hand, employee volunteerism is a component of corporate citizenship. It is an employee volunteer program defined as managed and planned effort that aims at motivating employees to serve the community through the leadership of their employer.
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Corporate citizenship is becoming a critical business need because all shareholders including investors and the general public are extending their loyalty only to businesses that strictly demonstrate ethical business practices. This includes caring for their employees, carrying out business activities that are not harmful to the public, manufacturing safe and reliable products and investing in projects that focus on community development. Corporations have come to terms with the fact that their main objectives which include profitability, employee retention and customer satisfaction all depend on the corporation’s ability to maintain responsible business practices.
Corporate citizenship includes a variety of things including practicing good governance and ethics, involvement in community projects, transparency and accountability, producing safe and reliable products and treating employees with respect among others (Pynes & Joan, 2013). Since the most successful corporations in the world have expressed an interest in corporate citizenship, organizations that aim at increasing their competitive advantage in the market should make it a priority. A recent research on corporate citizenship in Boston College found out that adoption of corporate citizenship has been on the rise in the past few years because most corporations feel that working towards improving the condition of their immediate community is very important. One of the most tangible ways that corporations are using to strengthen their social responsibility is volunteerism (Habisch, 2003). This practice helps them tackle social problems more effectively, it helps them build a more positive working environment and it is by far the best way to motivate and increase employee morale while at the same time improving the public image.
There is a tone of benefits that corporations, individuals and communities that adopt volunteerism gain. First, volunteerism is very important for individuals in the organization who become involved in their communities.one of the most essential benefit that employees reap from volunteerism is growth and development of leadership qualities and interpersonal skill (Lee & Higgins, 2001). This is because volunteer activities allow individuals to undertake new tasks thus acquiring new skills in the process. For example, when volunteers take up tasks such as teaching adults how to conserve the environment, they act as a leader and in the process they learn how to socialize with people in different settings. This in turn helps them gain more and better interpersonal skills which are helpful in their career development.
Secondly, volunteerism reduces isolation in the workplace as it creates an opportunity for employees to meet with other employees from different organization. As mentioned earlier, social responsibility has gained a lot of popularity hence some of the most successful corporations undertake volunteerism to enhance the practice. Therefore, individual employees get a chance to interact with other employees from other companies. This interaction is very important because it gives them a chance to learn from each other. Most employees gain new skills while others enhance their own skills (Plewa, Conduit, Quester & Johnson, 2015). Interaction also promotes sharing of ideas which is beneficial for individual career growth and development and it is sometimes important for an organization as a whole.
In addition, it creates a sense of self-worth and enrichment to individual employees when they realize how much of an impact they can make in the society through volunteering (Lee & Higgins, 2001). For instance, volunteers who come together and build houses for the needy or put up a children’s home for the orphans may get self-fulfillment when they visit the neighborhood later in life to see how much the project has grown.this shows that just a few minutes of sacrifice and help can turn into a lifetime of opportunity for so many people. This is in fact the backbone of volunteerism.
Consequently, volunteerism offers equal benefits to the organization as well. One of the main benefits is that it leverages the company’s ability to retain quality employees. volunteering helps employees perform their jobs and gain professional skills while at the same time team building and improve creative thinking which in turn leads to job satisfaction. Most corporations therefore use employee volunteering program to recruit the best employees and retain the highly qualified ones (Lee & Higgins, 2001) .In addition, volunteering improve corporate image and reputation because it proves to the community that the corporation has their best interests at heart. A survey carried out on managers to corporations that exercise volunteerism as the main aid to social responsibility found that 100 percent of corporation’s hat have employee volunteering program have a good public image and reputation (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2015). This is practical because volunteering in community projects proves to the community that a corporation is committed to the community in which it operates.
More so, volunteerism builds a cohesive and motivated workforce because it brings employees together and increases their morale. Employee volunteer program boosts their morale in that they see the results of participating in community projects. They have self-fulfillment and this is the most important thing to an employee (Johnson, Plewa, Conduit & Quester, 2014). They look forward to a corporation that values their contributions and one that fully exploits their potential. Volunteerism makes employee know that their employers have their best interests at heart and this is what motivates them.
Volunteerism is also very important to the community in that it creates new talent and energy. Volunteers introduce new skills to the community and this in turn creates new talent to community members who adopt these skills to come up with new ideas and projects. This thus leads to community development and advancement (Pynes & Joan, 2013). It also creates an understanding between business corporations and the nonprofit sector because both of theme come together to develop the community. Their relationship is very important as it promotes a country’s economy as a whole. Volunteerism also gives capacity to provide community services that may have otherwise been impossible. There are so many community projects that do not start because of lack of funds or skilled workforce but this problem is being solved by volunteerism. It provided skilled project manager to supervise projects, it provides ideas for new projects and it also provides training for adults and children in the community which might have been impossible without these corporations.
Corporations today have adopted new technologies in volunteerism and it has greatly helped them acquire most or all of the above mentioned benefits. The most adopted form of technology adopted in volunteerism is virtual volunteering. It is a new way of volunteering where an employee completes either a part or the whole task from the internet either from the office or from home depending on convenience. Most organizations offer volunteering opportunities for its employees which usually last from 10 minutes to an hour at maximum (Lee & Higgins, 2001). This benefits the employees, the organization and the community as well. It motivates the employees and boosts their morale, it gives an organization a chance to retain best quality employees and the community gains from whatever a volunteer offers. Micro volunteering is another technology that is gaining popularity in the world at a very high rate.it is a more innovative form of charity where volunteers take up parts of a project and completes it online. Just like virtual volunteering, this also benefits the individual, the organization and the community at large. Employees get to be part of a project, the organization gains good reputation for participating in community development and the community gains skills from the volunteers.
There is relationship between corporate citizenship and organization’s human capital initiative in that corporate social responsibility boosts profitability and it also boosts value. However, in some cases corporate social responsibility drifts a company’s attention from its core business of increasing productivity hence increasing profits which is the main responsibility to shareholders (Pynes & Joan, 2013). An example of this is human capital initiative which researches on the six main problems that are facing the nation including health, violence, family, drug abuse, aging and literacy. This initiative is a major part of corporate citizenship but sometimes it derails the main focus of the corporation. This in turn leads to shareholder’s resistance which creates a bad image for the corporation. Therefore, it is important for a corporation to lay down its core businesses in order to keep focus and avoid losing the business in the process.
This is indeed one of the worst disadvantages of volunteerism for an organization. The process may take a lot of time and resources and this is likely to affect the core businesses of the corporation. In addition volunteering may not add so much value to an organization sometimes. For example, when two highly competitive corporations offer the same volunteering services to a community, there is often no advantage cultivated from corporate citizenship (Gardberg & Fombrun, 2006). This is because the idea is to gain a competitive advantage in the market but if there is no uniqueness and innovation, there is no gain.in short, a corporation has to be the best volunteering agency to win a good reputation; otherwise it is just a waste of time and resources.
Volunteerism plays a great role in recruitment because an organization has goals that it wants to achieve and recruiting and placing the right volunteer into a carefully planned role assists in achievement of the set goals. Recruitment is not about placing any employee into any position but rather it is about matching the best skills and experience with an appropriate task. Volunteerism is therefore very important to recruitment process because it helps human resource managers to place the best suited employees for a specific job (Lee & Higgins, 2001). It also helps them to retain employees with the best qualities for a specific job.in addition, volunteers save money for an organization. For example, Red Cross is a well-known corporation that functions entirely on volunteer labor which saves them a lot of money. They use this money to start up different projects across the year. This is a very good example of the role volunteerism plays on recruitment.in addition, volunteers bring renewed energy on bard and this is why volunteerism has been made a major element in recruitment strategy of the most successful corporations’ worldwide.
References
Carroll, A. B., & Buchholtz, A. K. (2015). Corporate citizenship: social responsibility, responsiveness, and performance. Classics of Organization Theory , 439 .
Gardberg, N. A., & Fombrun, C. J. (2006). Corporate citizenship: Creating intangible assets across institutional environments. Academy of management Review , 31 (2), 329-346.
Habisch, A. (2003). Corporate Citizenship. Gesellschaftliches Engagement von Unternehmen in Deutschland, Berlin
Johnson, C., Plewa, C., Conduit, J., & Quester, P. (2014). Corporate volunteering: developing CSR image with internal and external benefits. Nova Science Publishers.
Lee, L., & Higgins, C. (2001). Corporate Volunteering. Journal of Corporate Citizenship , 4 , 79-90.
Plewa, C., Conduit, J., Quester, P. G., & Johnson, C. (2015). The impact of corporate volunteering on CSR image: A consumer perspective. Journal of Business Ethics , 127 (3), 643-659.
Pynes, Joan E. (2013). Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofit Organizations , 4th ed. California: Jossey-Bass, 2013. ISBN 978-1118398623.
