Corporate Social Responsibility - Essay Example

Corporate Social Responsibility Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 To what extent CSR is just public relation 3 CSR evolved beyond PR 4 CSR enhancingcompany reputation 4 CSR strengthening brand 6 CSR gaining competitive advantage 7 Conclusion 9 References 10 Introduction Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to the activities and responsibilities which companies undertake for benefiting the society. CSR involves in performing various corporate initiatives for protecting environment and helping society. For doing CSR activities organizations incur short term expenses which provide them benefits and advantages for long term. CSR implements positive impacts on stakeholders, employees, communities, investors, environment etc. From 1960, the term CSR started to become popular. Now a day maximum companies of the world are performing CSR functions and activities for getting different advantages. Companies express their corporate citizenship by performing various CSR activities. Organizations do CSR for achieving their business goals and objectives. They also do charity for getting positive response from customers. In this case study a detailed analysis of CSR is done. In the modern world the concept of CSR is used for maintaining public relations. This case study highlights that CSR activities have become an important tool for the companies to enhance their reputation and to establish a strong brand image. CSR is used by the companies to get competitive advantage. Organizations undertake different approaches for developing and implementing CSR activities. These activities help to enhance organizational values. CSR also explains how the companies behave and interact with their suppliers, employees, customers, communities etc. To what extent CSR is just public relation Public relation is the way by which companies, institute etc communicate with the public. Organizations directly or indirectly build relationship with public by maintaining and creating their positive image in front of them. In the modern business environment CSR is used as a tool for establishing strong public relations. The companies are involved in performing various types of social works which help them to build strong connection with general public. CSR is done not only to build public relation but also to benefit the society in many ways. Developing strong relationship with public is one of the important results of CSR. Organizations get engaged with societies and people by creating many job opportunities, producing good qualities of products and services etc. These activities influence the companies to get involved with more numbers of people and establish a good relationship with them. This helps the companies to know and understand the people in a better way and based on that they establish various CSR activities. Organizations perform various charitable functions, community development for performing social responsibilities. These activities help the companies to influence people and to establish strong brand image. Companies perform many CSR activities for protecting environment and society. These activities are performed not just to develop public relations but to safeguard the environment and to reduce various environmental damages caused by business. Firms organize many events on community developments by helping poor people, children etc. This social responsibility of the companies is aimed to improve the society. Therefore establishing public relation is not only the aim of organizations for doing CSR activities. There are many other causes involved which influence organizations to undertake different social responsibilities. CSR evolved beyond PR CSR enhancing company reputation Corporate social responsibilities contribute a lot in enhancing reputation of company. Various social activities are performed by companies for doing CSR. These activities are aimed to provide benefits to people and society. When people observed that a company is doing anything for social cause without having any profit then a good image of the company is established in people’s mind. Any CSR activities help companies to represent themselves in front of people. Companies try to develop positive reputation by organizing different events for benefiting the society. Corporate reputation helps to distinguish one business from another. Reputation plays an important role in success and development of business. CSR activities of companies also involve in providing various facilities and benefits to their stakeholders. Customers, distributors, suppliers, creditors are stakeholders. By helping them or by providing benefits to them companies influence them to feel that profit making is not the only aim of the company. The organizations are very much concerned about the well being of their stakeholders. These CSR activities will influence the stakeholders to think positive about the company. In the modern business environment establishing strong reputation is very important for the company. This helps the companies to attract more customers. Social responsibilities of organizations which are designed to provide benefit to customers contribute a lot in developing strong business reputation. Effective CSR activities protect organizational reputation and minimize negative publicity. Customers purchasing decisions are also influenced by CSR activities of organizations. Companies which perform huge number of CSR activities often attract more customers. Organizations develop long term relationship with different welfare organizations for performing CSR activities. Firms can enhance their reputations by becoming corporate citizen. Ethical standard of companies play a vital role in developing their CSR activities and reputation. Ethical standard of organization represents its values and ideas. The companies having high ethical standards generally get involved in performing strong and effective social responsibilities for carrying out different functions and processes. One of the important reasons of the companies for establishing high ethical value is to improve their reputation. Many companies build their reputation by doing environmental protection campaign. With the help of these campaigns the companies help the society to become clean. By this process organizations make the people understand that they are very much concerned about maintaining a healthy society. This helps the companies to build good reputation about them. Organizations also involved in promoting and developing many educational programs for helping general people. Many individuals are benefited from this type of educational programs. As a result the companies are able to establish good brand image by helping needy people. This CSR activity enhances the reputation of companies for providing education to large number of people. CSR strengthening brand Brand building has become an important thing for every business in the modern world. The companies put huge effort to build their brand image (Knox and Maklan, 2004). Corporate social responsibilities of the company play a significant role in developing and strengthening its brand. Companies can establish their strong brand image in the competitive market by performing effective CSR activities. In the modern business environment brand is very important to customer. Strong brand image influence the purchasing decision of customers. Many customers become ready to pay high price for purchasing branded products. Therefore companies invest huge amount of money and time in establishing strong brand image. Now a day people have become very much conscious about various environmental and social factors. So when they see that companies are getting involved in protecting the environment or working for any social cause then the people are influenced by this. They feel that purchasing products and service from those companies will actually help them to contribute something in developing or improving the society. For strengthening the brand image company develops non profit communities for providing different benefits to general people. As a result a good image of the company is established in people’s mind. In the present business environment customers expect more from the companies other than its service or products. They expect that companies should have a positive impact on environment and society. By fulfilling this expectation companies gain loyalty from customers. The strength of the brand is measured by its capacity and ability for creating and maintaining loyal customers. With the help of CSR activities the companies are able to influence its customers very easily (Retolaza, Ruiz and San‐Jose, 2009). For these reasons the companies perform effective CSR activities and invest huge amount of resources in those activities for making the people aware of their brand. Many organizations have also involved in producing CSR reports which help them to highlight different activities and functions they have undertaken for benefiting the society and environment. In CSR reports the companies also mention detail descriptions of their CSR activities which enable them to strengthen their brand image. For enhancing the brand image the companies often get associated with saving people from natural disaster. This has become one of the popular CSR activities of the companies. At the time of natural disaster the companies get involved in providing different facilities or food to the victims. This CSR activity helps the company to become popular among the mass (Werther and Chandler, 2011). Helping victims to get back to their normal life facilitate the companies to enhance their brand image and values. CSR gaining competitive advantage In the competitive business environment every organization wants to get some advantages from their different functions and activities. CSR activities are used as an important tool by the companies to gain competitive advantage. CSR of a company involves different types of responsibilities like economic, legal, ethical and discretionary responsibilities. Organizations try to gain competitive advantage by performing all of these responsibilities effectively. Strong CSR activities help the company to become different from its competitors by offering its customers greater benefit or high quality of products (Porter and Kramer, 2006). CSR activities which are implemented in an effective way bring good return to the companies. These activities help the companies to enhance motivation and loyalty of their employees. Many companies provide different types of benefits to their employees without having any profit. This influences the employees for increasing their commitment and dedication towards the company. Processes, strategies and stakeholders play an important role in gaining competitive advantage through CSR activities. Many large organizations have resources which can help to reduce different social problems. The organizations who involve in utilizing the resources effectively for reducing social problems are able to establish strong position in market (Hemphill, 2004). This acts as a competitive advantage for the companies as they are able to attract more customers. Identifying different social issues, sharing ideas regarding that facilitates the companies to generate a strong customer base by performing these social works. CSR helps the organizations to manage their business capitals in effective way. Companies get involved in recycling different materials and reduce waste production for benefiting the society as well as their business. Sales of a company also increase for effective CSR activities. Many customers support the companies which are involved in supporting children, orphans, needy people etc. The customers prefer to purchase products from those companies who are involved in performing this type of CSR activities. CSR activities involve valuing the company’s stakeholders. Therefore good CRS activities will facilitate the company to increase commitments of stakeholders towards organization. For getting competitive advantage companies develop ethical management system. This influences the companies to establish high organizational values which benefit them in the long run. Different social activities performed by companies help them to know and understand people in more details (Halme, Roome and Dobers, 2009). This facilitates the companies to improve their business process in more effective way. Many financial risks of the companies are reduced for strong CSR activities. As a result the companies are able to generate more profit. Conclusion In the modern business environment corporate social responsibilities have become very important for companies in growing their business. In this case study this is highlighted that organizations perform different types of CSR activities for helping the society and also for befitting their own business. In the past few years companies have made huge improvement in their CSR activities for establishing their position in the market and to get various advantages. Organization maintains social responsibility and sustainability through CSR. The activities of CSR create huge impact on different stakeholders of companies. Through CSR, organizations develop strong relationship with the people. On the bases of this relationship they are able to influence them to purchase their product and services. The CSR activities which are done for charitable reasons help to attract many more customers. This is because customers feel that organizations are using their money for helping needy people and they should support this work by purchasing products from those companies. Effective CSR activities also help the company to build strong brand image and good reputation. By performing CSR activities organizations get various competitive advantages. References Halme, M., Roome, N. and Dobers, P., 2009. Corporate responsibility: reflections on context and consequences. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 25(1), pp. 1-9. Hemphill, T. A., 2004. Corporate citizenship: the case for a new corporate governance model. Business & Society, 109(3), pp. 339-361. Knox, S. and Maklan, S., 2004. Corporate Social Responsibility: Moving Beyond Investment Towards Measuring Outcomes. European Management Journal, 22(5), pp 508-516. Porter, M. E. and Kramer, M. R., 2006. Strategy and Society, The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility. Harvard Business Review, 85(12), pp. 56-69. Retolaza, J. L., Ruiz, M. and San‐Jose, L., 2009. CSR in business start‐ups: an application method for stakeholder engagement. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 16(6), pp. 324-336. Werther, W.B. and Chandler, D., 2011. Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility. Los Angeles: Sage. Read More