The Truth About CSR by Rangan, Chase and Karim - Article Example

The paper "The Truth About Corporate Social Responsibilities by Rangan, Chase, and Karim" is a worthy example of an article on management. This article is centered towards highlighting real aspects of corporate social responsibility activities undertaken by companies. In this article, a thorough review is done to observe whether the article is able to meet its goals or objectives. The article is of Harvard Business Review and its title is “the truth about CSR”. Authors of this article are Kasturi Rangan, Sohel Karim, and Lisa Chase.

The article intends to resolve problems associated with CSR initiatives by outlining certain steps which should be followed by companies. From a personal perspective, I should evaluate various companies’ environmental and social activities.  Background Information The major problem outlined in this article is the firm’s CSR initiatives that are uncoordinated and disparate. These activities are usually implemented by managers and at times CEO’s level of engagement is negligible.

It has been observed that these firms are not able to maximize the overall impact on environmental and social systems. There are some set parameters for evaluating this article so as to ensure that originality is maintained throughout the article. It is evaluated on the basis of goal achievement by the article, its main lesson, shortcomings, and strengths of the article, etc. The results of the undertaken survey shall be analyzed well with the support of theoretical frameworks. Summary This article summarizes various CSR approaches adopted by companies.

In this article, a survey is conducted to identify the contribution of managers, CEOs, and directors towards CSR initiatives. Those managers have been surveyed who have attended CSR education program organized at Harvard Business School. The concept of “shared value” has been highlighted by the author. Shared value is all about creating value both in societal and economic terms. In the current scenario, firms are expected to implement coherent CSR strategies. These activities can be classified into three separate theaters.

Theater one is inclined towards philanthropy, theater two includes operational effectiveness improvement and theater three is business model transformation to generate maximum shared value. The author in this article has clearly stated that there is need to bring forth coordination amongst CSR programs. It has been well described that some theaters are taken into consideration whereas others are not given importance. As per the author, coordination does not indicate aligning all initiatives with the same environmental or social challenge (Rangan, Chase, and Karim).

It can be highlighted as initiatives which are consistent with values or purpose of business and are mutually reinforcing. According to this article firms should structure programs in every theater to be well aligned with values or purposes of a firm, implementing mechanisms to evaluate the success of initiatives, bringing forth coordination amongst different theater programs and developing interdisciplinary management in order to promote CSR strategy. Evaluation The article has been able to achieve its major goal which was to reflect upon environmental and societal activities performed by companies.

In this article, a survey has been incorporated so as to clearly state real-time scenario. The problem related to CSR initiatives has been well determined along with a proposed solution that can be adopted by modern world organizations. On the other hand, the three theaters of practice and their internal level of coordination are efficiently demonstrated. The lesson of this article is to highlight CSR responsibilities of companies which contribute to the well being of the society and attaining goals of the organizations.

The article also focuses on the lesson of aligning companies environmental and social activities with its organizational business values and purpose. CSR activities help to enhance business reputation reduces risk and contributes a lot in producing good business results. The strengths of this article are it provides different solutions for developing good CSR strategies by companies. It shows the steps which are important to perform and improve the CSR operation of a business. The article mentions different programs by which the company can undertake CRS programs.

The shortcoming of this article is it has neglected the fact that many companies perform CSR activities only to help society. Moreover, the article has not included any CSR theory or model. The personal experience I can relate to this subject is that I have seen many gardens and roadside trees are maintained by big multinational companies. These are the CSR activities performed by those companies which help the society and also the company to fulfill its different goals. Conclusion The article gives a detailed description of different Corporate Social Responsibilities performed by companies for helping the society and environment along with fulfilling its different goals and objectives.

CSR activities contribute a lot in developing operational effectiveness, improving the company’s reputation and building systematic strategies. This article focuses on the different process that the company should follow or they are following for achieving their goals by implementing CSR activities. I should recommend that further research should be done on those companies do performs CSR activities only to benefit the people or society.