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Corporate Social Responsibility



[Name of the Institute]Corporate Social Responsibility

Introduction

The term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) describes the voluntary contribution of the economy to a sustainable development that go beyond the legal requirements. CSR stands for responsible business conduct in the actual business (market), over ecologically relevant aspects (environment) in relations with employees (workplace) and the exchange with the relevant stakeholder and interest groups (stakeholders). Stated more clearly and simply, it is the business contribution to sustainable development issues. CSR result from requests from civil society (associations, environmental and humanitarian) to take into account environmental and social impacts of business operations. These issues were born since the 1970s in particular the global environmental problems that occurred in the world. The CSR concept appeared in the 1960s in the business literature (Social Responsibilities of the Businessman H. Bowen in 1953, and The Responsible Corporation by G Goyder 1961). It has since been the subject of theoretical development in several researchers.

CSR is the declination for the business concepts of sustainable development, integrating the three pillars of environmental, social, and economic concerns. CSR tends to define the responsibilities of enterprises vis-à-vis its stakeholders in the philosophy of "act locally, think globally". It is therefore, an approach of integrating globally and locally in the context of thinking strategically (Porter & Kramer, pp. 126, 2006).

Discussion

Definition

There is no universally accepted definition for the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). While the concepts of CSR and corporate citizenship (CC) are often used in business practice as a synonym, there is a developed and a clear position on the relationship of the two concepts. Corporate Citizenship (CC) represents only a part of the corporate social responsibility and the designated on the actual business activities. It is a continuous commitment of business to solve social problems in the local environment of the company. Thus, CC essentially is reduced to sponsoring, donations and foundations.

Corporate social responsibility is a concept, which the company uses as the basis to voluntarily integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders. This definition identifies social and environmental concerns as the two central points for CSR. If we extend this to the economic concerns, we obtain the three dimensions of sustainability (Kramer, pp, 169, 2011). The modern understanding of CSR is increasingly seen and construed as holistic, encompassing all dimensions of sustainability: integrating enterprise concept that "all go social, environmental and economic contributions of a company's voluntary commitment to social responsibility on regulatory compliance. Justifying the need for the implementation of CSR in companies, there is are two distinctive approaches: the normative and the economically motivated approach.

The Normative Approach

The normative approach considers the company as a part of society and is therefore it is called the corporate citizenship approach. The company claims non-monetary benefits from the company, such as infrastructure, security, education and social systems, the social responsibility of the companies is expected in return. The normative approach thus justifies the regulatory pressure from governments, and transnational ...