·         Explain corporate social responsibility in your own words.  Name a company you believe to be socially responsible.  

·         Defend your choice.  

·         Choose one of the weekly readings and discuss how the article changed your understanding of corporate social responsibility

                           Weekly reading

Concept of Social Responsibility
Multinational Corporations, Corporate Social Responsibility and Poverty Eradication
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Multinational-Corporations-by-Nattavud-Pimpa-110222-903.html

Global Nature of Social Responsibility
A new business structure appears to be on the horizon as large corporations are now integrating activist demands into their business plans.
http://www.globalenvision.org/library/8/1433

Development of Stakeholder Relationships
This article describes relationship-based management, an emerging values-based management philosophy that puts relationships ahead of profit maximization.
http://www.cim.sfu.ca/pages/resources_collaborative.htm

 Social Responsibility of Business

During this lecture, we will be discussing the social responsibility of businesses.

Let’s begin our discussion by defining what social responsibility is. Simply stated, social responsibility is an organization’s initiatives to assess and take responsibility for its effects on the environment as well as its impact on social welfare.

In today’s business climate, social responsibility in business is becoming an expectation. Organizations are continuously being told by the government, the media as well outspoken consumers about the advantages of acting socially responsible and warned about the risks of a lack thereof. Many organizations are seeing that they can gain a competitive edge by appealing to the increasing numbers of socially and environmentally responsible consumers, investors as well as employees.

Many business leaders see business social responsibility initiatives as something that might be nice to do but are not connecting it to expanding the business and increasing their profits. The problem with this mindset is that they are not considering that being socially responsible can make all the difference to their competitive advantage. Organizational initiatives such as volunteering, philanthropy and supporting community-improvement initiatives can significantly increase its brand, reputation and valuation of their business. An advantage to a business being socially responsible is that it can create goodwill among the community it serves as well as increase their trust in the business. In my personal opinion, consumer trust and having a good reputation are some of a business’s most beneficial assets. In fact, I will go on to say that without these two things, the business might very well find itself out of business. An important aspect to an effective corporate social responsibility initiative is that a business should make sure that they develop the right kind of socially responsible program for the business, or one that consumers in the community will find valuable. When initiated properly, it can open up a variety of new business relationships and opportunities. The bottom line is that if effective, not only will the business see success in their local communities grow, but their businesses culture as well. It can become a culture where the employees enjoy coming to work and where the community will choose to buy their products from.

We will end our lecture by briefly discussing the three main approaches to corporate social responsibility and what they mean below.

·         The Responsibility Project – company assigns group to undertake projects that establish standards, planning, and evolution of various aspects of the business

·         The Responsibility Program – companies become more proactive and comprehensive

·         The Responsible Business – a business understands its actions can actually improve and evolve healthy systems and responsibility becomes fully integral to the way all business activity and thinking is conducted.