...Are corporations that participate in voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility practices seen as unethical through exploiting CSR initiatives for a profit? In today’s society, corporations that perform better in their respective markets are able to collect assets that are needed to participate in Corporate Social Responsibility practices. Through these voluntary practices corporations are able to improve their social, environmental, and human rights accounts. This essay will begin with an insight of what Corporate Social Responsibility is; furthermore it will elaborate on how corporations that participate in the practice of Corporate Social Responsibility are seen as unethical because it is able to exploit its initiatives in the pursuit of profits. The Corporate Social Responsibility initiative has developed significantly through the past few decades. This is because of many multinational corporations have been influenced by civil societies to adopt numerous voluntary initiatives. Corporations have been influenced into adopting programs that assist in improving their social, environmental, and human rights records (Utting, 2005, pg. 375). These corporations are expected to adopt new codes of conduct, which administrate their environmental management, the health and safely of their employees, partnerships with Non-Governmental Organizations, and increase their support for community development projects (Utting, 2005, pg. 375) Multinational corporations have started engaging...
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...Demetria Brown Social Responsibility Is any corporation doing their part? Abstract In today’s society of accountability and sustainability, corporate reputation and corporate responsibility are intertwined. Corporations in particular now have to deal with rapidly growing pressures and expectations from diverse and demanding stakeholders (the people of the public) pressures that they cannot escape and expectations that they must address. Corporate Social Responsibility has begun to move from the sideline to the mainstream, from its established positions in socially responsible and environmental investment movements, to the center of media attention and on to the public agendas of multinational corporations. Much good can be credited to ethical public relations practice as is relates to corporate social responsibility. (Broom, 2009, p.133) The term "Corporate Social Responsibility" demonstrates the new expectations that are emerging for multinational corporations. Public relations and corporate responsibility worlds would do well to share an interest in aligning corporate reputation with a post-CSR agenda that is increasingly focused on accountability and sustainability -- and increasingly integrated with corporate strategy. Most corporate managements and communications professionals understand the basics of the corporate responsibility agenda and its potential impact, on the reputations of their companies and clients. Not all corporations are comfortable with integrating...
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...Scott | | | MGT | Michael Novak: Capitalism and the Corporation | | | The topic of ethics just seems to be hard to define when using other peoples’ writings but I never have an issue of explaining my stand on ethics. ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Faculty Use Only ------------------------------------------------- <Faculty comments here> ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- <Faculty Name> <Grade Earned> <Writing Score> <Date Graded> Introduction The problem to be investigated in this paper is the relationship between capitalism and the corporation and how socialism will affect this relationship. In the ever expanding economy, the government is trying to cash in more and more by taking over the capital owned by firms. The firms have to try to survive by doing whatever it takes to keep the government from overtaking their capital. In the big picture, firms what to make a profit but also provide a benefit to the society as a whole. We have to look deeper to explain what socialism and capitalism really are and what the corporations are really trying to do. Social Responsibility of Business Friedman said that the social responsibility of a business is to increase its profits (Friedman, 1970)...
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...Freeman and Milton Friedman both had great argument on social responsibility, Friedman argued that “There is one and only one social responsibility of business to increase its profits”. Friedman believed that taking on a social and moral issues is not necessarily effective for a company. This will place those corporations at a better competitive disadvantage if they do not focus on making their profit. Taking on social and moral responsibility is not economically feasible for the corporation. Corporations should just focus on earning a profit and leave social issues to others. It’s in the best interest of a corporation to not deal with social problems. However, if Friedman truly believed in that corporations have no social responsibility then it’s possible that corporations are encouraged to steal, defraud for their customers and shareholder. Looking at Freeman in the other hand, he believed in moral responsibility to all stakeholders. He believed that those people that are focusing on just profits and shareholder are greedy. As modern corporation continues to grow many social problems will accrue and it’s the corporate world responsibility to address those problems. In the long run it will increase the future of the company and reduce any governmental regulation. If large corporation can spend time addressing their social issues it will benefit, there company. Looking at environmental issues as an example, some corporations have had a negative effect on the environment, wasting...
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...Corporate Social Responsibility by Your Name name of the module module number word count =1,519 Tutor/Professor Name University Name Department 16th December 2010 Corporate Social Responsibility Corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports provide stakeholders with valuable information about the relationship between a given corporation and society; additionally these reports may serve as a public relations vehicle. CSR reports improve communication between a corporation and its local constituents as well as the greater society. CSR reports and accounting data combine to offer investors and other stakeholders a larger picture of a corporation’s strategy and financial condition. By merging the two, stakeholders have a better understanding of how a corporation’s social initiatives improve its overall health. For example, when energy conservation programs allow a corporation to cut spending costs and cause the development of a new product while at the same time increasing jobs the CSR report acts as a financial statement and a public image enhancer. CSR reports provide information that is valuable for different reasons to different people. Employees and prospective employees can decide which companies they want to work for based on safety information about the workplace contained in these reports. Corporate managers can use the reports to monitor how successful they are in attaining their stated goals. They can also examine the progress...
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...Topic 3: Does CSR represent a genuine desire by corporations to do well towards society? Introduction The dominant model of business activity in the past merely concentrated on the benefit of the shareholders, which is maximizing profit from the firms’ activities. Any other benefits or harms created in the process of the activity were considered secondary. Issues such as ethics and creating values for customers and stakeholders were thus ignored and rarely paid attention to. Unfortunately with the business world ever-changing, the culture that was embedded in the past is no longer workable in this 21st century as it was resistant to changes, inconsistent with the laws and ignores the ethical side (Freeman 2008). The issue of Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR has been the subject of debate among researchers for the past twenty years (Chen & Winai, 2011). There have been many arguments if businesses should engage CSR initiatives in their operations. CSR or corporate citizenship is defined as 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 (Moir 2001). The essay will discuss on the literature review of the different perspectives of CSR, arguments against it and the analysis if CSR represent corporations’ genuine desire to contribute towards the society. Literature Review Arguments for CSR ...
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...that a business has a responsibility to maximize its profits and that for a business to maximize profits for its shareholders it must at least adopt a pseudo-stakeholder theory of operation representing social responsibility although it has no moral responsibility to be socially responsible. To facilitate this argument, I will use the definitions of those terms as presented by the authors in the book. The stockholders invested their money for the purpose of earning a return on that investment in the form of more money, not in the form of social and moral gratitude from every stakeholder involved with the corporation. Management must take that intention and do their best to see that it is realized. To do so they have to be concerned with the opinions and feelings of all of the stakeholders associated with their companies. If a management team operates a corporation in a way that they show the stakeholders that they are only concerned with the bottom line, then those same stakeholders, and more specifically the consumers, will react to that in negative ways. Theyll look for substitutes to the corporations products or determine that they can live without the products and thereby lower the corporations revenues. If the corporation is not run environmentally efficiently then the towns and cities that are home to the corporations factories and offices will no longer welcome them and may take measures to force the corporation out of their towns. If the corporation habitually takes advantage...
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...The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits by Milton Friedman The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970. Copyright @ 1970 by The New York Times Company. When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the "social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system," I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned "merely" with profit but also with promoting desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact they are–or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously– preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades. The discussions of the "social responsibilities of business" are notable for their analytical looseness and lack of rigor. What does it mean to say that "business" has responsibilities? Only people can have responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and in this sense may have artificial responsibilities, but "business" as a whole cannot be said to have...
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...Should Government have the largest influence on Corporate Social Responsibility ? Introduction Carroll’s four responsibilities of business are economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary (Carroll, 1991). Economic responsibility is a business organization to produce goods or service to society, and creditors or shareholders can get return. Legal responsibility is defined in law by government that management is expected to follow. Ethical responsibility is organization management to obey the beliefs in a society. The last discretionary responsibility is the management of their own accord to take obligations, they do it by themselves, and not others force them to do (Carroll, 1991). Definition of Corporate Social Responsibility Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is defined as a business’s decisions or actions are made which take outcomes beyond the organization's economic profit into account in the decision making process (Carroll, 1991). Social responsibilities include ethical responsibilities and discretionary responsibilities. The difference between them was that less people expect a firm to perform discretionary responsibilities, while a lot of people expect a firm to perform ethical responsibilities. Discretionary responsibilities are like day-care centers, to training the hard-core unemployed and philanthropic contributions. A firm can take actions to perform its ethical responsibilities and discretionary responsibilities that society will value it but...
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...Research Paper DOES CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY TO STAKEHOLDERS MAXIMIZE FIRM’S VALUE? DOES CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY TO STAKEHOLDERS MAXIMIZE FIRM’S VALUE? Topic: This paper seeks to explore the economic mechanisms behind corporate responsibility based on a microeconomic perspective of the firm. The ultimate objective is to ruminate on the effects of corporate responsibility of firms to stakeholders. That is how corporate responsibility to stakeholders can help maximize or minimize the firm’s value. In this research paper, I am going to explain the principle of stakeholder and the corporate social Responsibility that corporation owes to its stakeholders. The fact that corporations are entitled to its stakeholders and the environment within its scope of business has been a controversial issue. At the beginning, I will give a clear understanding of what Corporate Responsibility by firms to its stakeholders is. Later, I will make an argument in favor and against Corporate Responsibility by the firm to its stakeholders. Lastly, I will come to a conclusion on how firm’s value is maximized. That is what corporation should do for its stakeholder. According to rigorous research, each person has his or her personal responsibility that needs to be performed in order to maintain a good image in the society. Just as humans are faced with responsibilities, so as Corporations, since they are seen as a group of individuals working together to accomplish a goal, that goal being making...
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...refers to the capability of corporations to influence government, the economy, and society based on their organizational resources. - Power is often a function of size and by almost any measure used, the world’s largest business enterprises are impressively big. -One way to get a sense of the economic power of the world’s largest companies is to compare them with nations -The size and global reach of major transnational corporations such as Walmart give them tremendous power. -We count on corporations for job creation; much of our community well-being; the standard of living we enjoy; the tax base for essential municipal, state, and national services; and our needs for banking and financial services, insurance, transportation, communication, utilities, entertainment, and growing proportion of health care. -Corporations not only dominate the traditional domains of product manufacture and service delivery. -The following well-known quotation, frequently appearing in journals for business executives challenges its readers to assume a responsible role for business in society: business has become… the most powerful institution on the planet. The dominant institution in any society needs to take responsibility for the whole… every decision that is made, every action that is taken, must be viewed in light of that kind of responsibility. -the tremendous power of the world’s leading corporations has both positive and negative effects. A big company may have definite advantages over...
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...The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the "social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system," I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned "merely" with profit but also with promoting desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact they are--or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously--preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades. The discussions of the "social responsibilities of business" are notable for their analytical looseness and lack of rigor. What does it mean to say that "business" has responsibilities? Only people have responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and in this sense may have artificial responsibilities, but "business" as a whole cannot be said to have responsibilities, even in this vague sense. The first step toward clarity in examining the doctrine of the social responsibility...
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...so did our awareness to our surrounding and how we affect it so companies and corporation all around the world started to care not purely on profit for their shareholders but how they effected the population the environment the culture as a hall, which in its turn led to what is currently known as “social economy” (1). The social economy phenomena created two types of corporation, first the social kind which are either non-profit or for profit and the goal of their corporations is to improve humanity as much as possible and to help sustain a clean and healthy environment even if this goal overlaps with the goal of making as much profit as possible. ‘Many commercial enterprises would consider themselves to have social objectives, but commitment to these objectives is motivated by the perception that such commitment will ultimately make the enterprise more financially valuable. Social enterprises differ in that, inversely, they do not aim to offer any benefit to their investors, except where they believe that doing so will ultimately further their capacity to realize their social and environmental goals’. Historically the concept of social enterprises has been around for some time now under different names and different tendencies. The earliest use of the social enterprise concept was in 1978 England in “Beechwood College” where the professors there helped workers to develop social auditing …. In the US, the work of ASHOKA was picked up at Harvard, Stanford...
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...6Critical Sociology http://crs.sagepub.com Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee Crit Sociol 2008; 34; 51 DOI: 10.1177/0896920507084623 The online version of this article can be found at: http://crs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/1/51 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Critical Sociology can be found at: Email Alerts: http://crs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://crs.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations (this article cites 30 articles hosted on the SAGE Journals Online and HighWire Press platforms): http://crs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/34/1/51 Downloaded from http://crs.sagepub.com at LA TROBE UNIVERSITY on April 21, 2008 © 2008 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. Critical Sociology 34(1) 51-79 http://crs.sagepub.com Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee University of Western Sydney, Australia Abstract In this article I critically analyze contemporary discourses of corporate social responsibility and related discourses of sustainability and corporate citizenship. I argue that despite their emancipatory rhetoric, discourses of corporate citizenship, social responsibility and sustainability are defined by narrow business...
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...Q. Do corporations have moral responsibilities? * Provide an explanation of the legal structure of a corporation and the separation of ownership and management. * Outline the principal/agent argument. * Argue a case against corporations having moral responsibilities. * Present case for corporations having moral responsibilities. * What is the difference between global CSR and domestic CSR? * Case study. Examine a MNC which has had a CSR issue. * Sum up. Introduction This assignment will seek to delve upon profit making institutions, their objective on increasing shareholder value and in the quest to do so, evaluate their sole focus on economic benefits which might erode broader social benefit or harm the society. In this light, this report seeks to evaluate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in theory and actual practice. In the process of evaluating, the assignment would showcase different scenarios / cases where CSR abuses or upholding the same would be examined. From such cases, arguments would be built to show how abusing business activities (Hamilton and Webster, 2012, p. 311) may have a negative impact on stakeholders and societies; and how upholding CSR values is beneficial for the society at large besides being beneficial from business standpoint as well. Globalisation has increased corporate power which is pervasive on a world wide scale and any abuses of this power has reverberating effects across the globe, an example being Lehman...
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