ASSIGNMENT 2: BUSINESS ETHICS AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

WHAT IS CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

What does CSR mean anyway? Is it a secret agent like the 007 Bond, but maybe with different type of mission, who knows they are ask to be the stalker for company to do some secret stalking activity to other company agenda? Anything can happen in implement and existing a relationship in business. 

Different organization have framed and define CSR in many ways. CSR define as the voluntary activities undertaken by a company to operate in an economic, social an environmentally and sustainable manner. Its little bit bombastic to understand, let me put out in a situation. It is about how company actually manage the business process to produce an overall positive impact on society.

Corporate Social Responsibility is the commitment by business to act 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.

CSR is build for sustainable livelihoods. It respects cultural and finds the business opportunities in building the skills of employees.

 A business philosophy focuses in the need for firms to behave as good corporate citizens, not as obeying the law but as their production and marketing activities in a standard which  avoid causing environmental pollution or exhausting finite world resources.

Some businesses have begun to behave in a more socially responsible manner, because their managers want to do, and partly because of scared of environmentalist and consumer pressure groups and the media, and concern for their public image. It is argued that socially responsible behavior can stay in the long time.

SOURCE: Collins Dictionary of Business 

In the United States, CSR has been defined much more in terms of a philanthropic model. Companies make profits, except by fulfilling their duty to pay taxes. Emm...thats sound abit realistic.Then they donate a certain share of the profits to charitable causes. It is seen as tainting the act for the company to receive any benefit from the giving.

The European model is much more focused on operating the core business in a socially responsible way, complemented by investment in communities for solid business case reasons. Personally, I believe this model is more sustainable.

But as with any process based on the collective activities of communities of human beings (as companies are) there is no 'one size fits all'. In different countries, there will be different priorities, and values that will shape how business act. And even the observations above are changing over time. The US has growing numbers of people looking towards core business issues.

 Business for Social Responsibility define CSR as

Operating a business in a manner that meets or exceeds the ethical, legal, commercial and public expectations that society has of business.

After reviewing the broadly definition of CSR, somehow it now focuses on the impact of how their manage their core business. Some go further than others in  how far companies go beyond managing their own impact into the terrain of acting specifically outside of that focus to make a contribution to the achievement of broader societal goals. It is a key difference, when many business leaders feel that their companies are ill equipped to pursue broaders societal goals, and activists argue that companies have no democratic legitimacy to take such roles.