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Is Responsible Business Important

In: Business and Management

Submitted By philipwang
Words 697
Pages 3
Tutorial 1: What is does the term ‘responsible business’ mean to you?
Knight (2015) noted that the word ‘responsible’ can be seen as accountable as well, and principles of responsible commerce is another language rather than accounting, marketing etc. The ORB (2009) website provides information about the definition of responsible business, which is business responsibility is often known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and CSR 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.
For me, responsible is someone treats something as his or her obligation. And business is activities of buying and selling, or in another word, social dealings between hundreds of thousands people all around the world. So my understanding of the term “responsible business” is that companies and firms should build their businesses with the consideration of morality and values rather than only aim to maximize their profits, which means companies and firms should build a socially acceptable business that not only according to shareholders’ wants but also have good influences for society and the environment of our planet.
Knight (2015) discussed there are two points of views as in shareholder and stakeholder. Docstos (2009) post details about these two theories that stakeholder theory is businesses have corporate social responsibilities with respect to employees, customers and society at large while Shareholder Theory is businesses have only one obligation, which is to maximize profit for shareholders.
Enron, a good example that if a company doesn’t rely on a responsible business-even it’s huge once-it cannot evade nose-dive and crash (Shaw et al. 2013, p3). Founded in 1980s, Enron only took a short period of

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