Corporate Social Responsibility

Introduction

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) discuss is mature and rich. It is, however, important to note that CSR discuss is still a work in progress, as intellectuals continue to strive towards the best society, while identifying the best of roles for the business sector in the society. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) constitutes an economic phenomenon of significant importance. Today, firms largely determine welfare through producing goods and services for consumers, interest for investors, income for employees, and social and environmental externalities or public goods affecting broader subsets of society. Stakeholders often take account of ethical, social, and environmental firm performance, thereby changing the nature of strategic interaction between profit-maximizing firms, on one hand, and utility-maximizing individuals, on the other hand. In line with these, various roles have been ascribed to the business sector, in the name of CSR. While to one extreme a business is only expected to concern itself with making the best of profits for owners, the other extreme beliefs “A corporation's stakeholder constituency … extend far beyond the traditional confines of shareholders, employees, managers, consumers and investors” (Brammer and Millington, 213-226) and wants the businesses to as far as distribute her profits in charity.

The two extremes together with the various middle grounds, no doubt, provided justifications for their stands and all the ideologies can find a place to key. It is the belief of this study that the current states of CSR discuss demands negotiation. Stakeholders outside the organizations and corporate watchdog/civil society are placed in negotiation position with the companies not to be only profit minded but to consider also other stakeholder.

This study is considering a situation where nobody goes cap in hand begging for CSR or a situation that gives the corporation the opportunity to stop a scenario where stakeholders and corporate watchdog/civil society are compelling managers to violate agency contract to use owners' resources other than for owners. Based on the statement of Fisher (391-400) that “The only social responsibility of business managers is to maximize profits while complying with the “rules of the game”, we argue that strict compliance with societal-embedded and legal contractual agreements, is enough for CSR and corporations may not even be able to do more than that. It is a state of the world where the business sector is only expected to do what is objectively their responsibility and those responsibilities are fulfilled completely and nothing less than “strictly completely”. In similar thinking with the compliance perspective of Munilla and Miles (371-387), the society should not go to the extent of the forced perspective but the compliance should be total.

Responsibilities of Business

CSR discuss provides big enough literature on description of the responsibilities of business. Quazi and O'Brien, in describing CSR, identified the classical, socio-economic, modern and philanthropic views of CSR. Under the classical view, the business is concerned with making a profit for owners. Business responsibility expands to basic social demands under the socio-economic point of view while the modern view embraces “the broader matrix of society….and includes the ...