Global Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility - Gap Company - Case Study Example

Name: Task: Lecturer: Date: Global Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility In every company, the human resource department is very important in giving directions on how issues are to be handled. This is also a department which supervises and addresses all the issues affecting the employees, motivating employees and planning training programs to ensure that the employees are competent in carrying out the company’s work (Kirkpatrick 44). Human resource is also responsible on the issues concerning environmental management i.e. ensure that the company’s waste are disposed appropriately on the right place, which will help in reducing pollution in the region. Disposing of industrial wastes is very sensitive because if not disposed appropriately they will affect people living within that area, polluting the environment which can cause various diseases especially to children who are under the age of 5 years. It might also cause some abnormalities to infants and other complication to those children when they are born. The companies therefore should make sure that they are not polluting the environment with industrial waste (Bogardus 113-115). To analyze appropriately issues of human resource, environment and the importance of corporate responsibility, we are going to analyze the Gap Company. The Gap is a company which was established in 1969 and is dealing mainly with cloths especially of all classes of people. The company has many branches in many countries and has become among the largest companies in the world. The company has been doing well from the time it was established and it is currently operating 3000 stores and has also employ over 134,000 employees. The main goal of the company is to act in a socially responsible manner to the whole community. This social responsibility has improved the company’s image and as contributed to the success of the company’s image. It has also improved the company’s operations in terms of efficiency, productivity, agreement in part of employees and the profitability level. The company emphasizes on full satisfactions to the customers by providing high quality products (Blishak 49) Being a company that produces direct emission of matter to the air however, the company has been accused of polluting environment. The company has been accused of polluting air and water, by carelessly dumping dangerous industrial chemicals to rivers which are the same rivers where people collect water for domestic use; this could cause dangerous diseases to the people using the same water. The company and its business associates has also being accused of being a threat to African children, the company has been perceived as the greatest polluter of environment in Africa causing a danger of spread of diseases in the region. It is the duty of the human resource manager to ensure that the environment is conserved, the need to have proper means of dumping the waste chemicals, they need to dump in places where children cannot access them easily, furthermore they need to treat these chemicals before disposing them to avoid pollution of air (Tower 51-53). Gap has acknowledged the fact that there are various legal and cultural environments laws which govern the companies operations, the companies and factories carrying out business both locally and internationally. Gap has been operating its business within this international code of vendor conduct. The management was also supposed to ensure that the company and its manufacturers (industries) operate within these laws. Gap Inc has never been operating under the ruling laws and regulations in the market, the company had failed to comply with the laws that government the labor, health of the workers and the environment. This was uncovered by Sunday Times, that the company was dumping dangerous industrial chemicals on the river, it was also revealed that the company was ignoring the presents of kids by dumping the industrial waste in an open areas, all these case was recorded in Africa. The human resource manager is responsible for the action of the company he or she is required to intervene on issue of the company; he is required to come up with a plan on how to reduce cases of pollution of environment (Russo 99). In addition he is supposed to lay down regulations governing their business operations with its business associates such as manufacturers which are supplying them with materials. They should also set standards that require its employees to operate within, for example it was reported that the company was disposing the chemicals which was used in cleaning and bleaching jeans, such chemicals was dangerous and could easily affect the fertility of the soil i.e. killing soil nutrients (bacteria). The company was destroying the fertility of the land yet Africa depends on agricultural goods as a source of income. This could affect the countries export thus interfering with the balance of payment of the country (Jones and George 54). To prevent future pollution of these kinds, the company should not only develop the environmental management system but also an alerting system to alert people or the local community authority incase of an emergency in the company. This alerting system is called the environmental emergency plan, where the company should recycle their waste by utilizing them in manufacturing of fertilizers. Lastly, the company should dispose its hazardous and combustible material in a safe way and at the same time ensuring that they do it in a legal manner that is disposing them appropriately. The Gap management should implement all these issues in the aim of conserving the environment for future generation. The company has never been paying attention to the management of the environment which could have created good relationship between the company and the other bodies which affect or deal with the company. The company had not been doing its best to maintain a clean environment; this is because they have been disposing its waste from the company carelessly. Though the company has been evaluating its business and coming up with new programs in order to pay attention to the environment initiatives, they have not succeeded; the company has been accused of supporting unethical behavior on handling the company’s waste such as chemicals. The human resource manager needs to prioritize the environmental issue to be among the key issues in the company and involved the entire department and the management as a whole. The employees should be asked to support the issue by educating them on the negative effects of polluting the environment (Betts and Johnston 77). The company has never shown any efforts on minimizing and controlling pollution, they normally disposes their waste on rivers (especially in Lesotho), mostly the chemicals, and the company have generally failed to value the human life. This is because the management had claimed that they were not aware that the industrial chemical waste was disposed in the river in Africa. Pollution of environment is a serious issue which affects all living things, risking the life of those who stay near the polluted area because those people breathe polluted air. The company should adopt and respect the laws which governed the industries on how they will manage their production. Industries should ensure that they avoid pollution of environment as much as possible. The case of Gap which was reflected in the article indicates that the company was no longer observing the code of ethics which govern the companies. This had serious consequences on their reputation. It was embarrassing because it had seriously contrasted with the project of the company which was dealing with the product ‘red’ and product ‘green’ (Fletcher 88) The above incidents had affected the company negatively, they company’s image was perceived negatively by entire customers and other stakeholders. The Human resource department in this company was to be blame because they had failed to address the issue. In every company, the human resources manger is responsible in giving direction the employees on how to handle such issues (Kerr and Anderson 40) Corporate social responsibility is corporate self regulation whereby the company should deliver services to the community in an ethical manner, i.e. the company could participate in building shades in bus station, others like Gap Company has participated in eradications of AIDs as part of their corporate responsibility. The company had involved in this project so that they could make a different and commit themselves in the issues of corporate responsibility. For the company to perfect on this they had to employ competent employees so that they can offer quality services (Iyer 56-58). Corporate responsibility has grown to be part of the company and has grown due to its importance. It is advisable for the management of the Gap Company to involve itself in it because it acts as framework for the companies’ management i.e. being responsible to its entire stakeholders. It can also serves as the ‘reputational’ badge in communication of stakeholders. Finally, the company should use the corporate social responsibility to gain access to moral, ethical, and socially answerable to funds of investors. The human resource manager should have a planned how the company should effectively participate in offering services to the community in terms of social responsibility, for example the Gap Company has participated by developing a project of ‘Red’ and ‘Green’ programs. This is a good example of a corporate responsibility in which a company should be participating in. Companies should establish training programs and refresher coursers, training programs will help in equipping employees with the necessary skills, making them to be able to work on challenging task without supervising them. It will also help in developing leadership skills in employees. The human resource manager will be in a position to select the employees to be promoted while undergoing their training programs. Refresher courses are meant for the managers to refresh their skills on management issues. For the case of Gap Company, it should offer refresher courses to its contractors to ensure that contractors are producing quality work. The human resource manager should motivate his contractors so that they can work effectively and aggressively for them to meet the company’s objectives. They should use various means of motivation in motivating employees, such ways include; recognition of good job done by the contractors, by using encouraging words such as “well done keep up” will greatly motivate the contractors (Madsen 60-62). Gap Company should managed environmental quality by avoiding pollution of environment and dumping its waste at the right place. They should avoid pollution of water with the used waste chemical from the company (Curtin 67). They can also recycle the used materials instead of disposing them. Many companies recycle their used products and others have avoided using non decomposable materials. Gap Company can avoid future pollution of environment by making sure that their pipes are not leaking, they should used chemicals which cannot pollute the soil when it is disposed. Industries can also prevent future pollution by using less electricity and gasoline; this will greatly reduce the pollution of air in the region, in addition to this, the company can avoid further pollution by avoiding the use of gas powered machinery. All these will reduce r the pollution of environment (Andersson and Levi 72-74). Gap was seriously accused for allowing its manufacturer (factory) and Levi Strauss to dumped used chemicals on the river and also other tips which were dangerous to kids. This report was published in Sunday Times. This news paper was investigating the environmental condition in African countries such as Lesotho, southern Africa. The company was carelessly dumping dangerous things like razors, needles, and some chemicals which are poisonous for example caustic soda. All these were very dangerous to children who are below the age of 10 years. Furthermore, these chemicals had caused breathing difficulties, weeping eyes and rashes. In solving all these problems, human resource department of the Gap Company should categorize all the causes of pollution and look for means of preventing those causes; the company should develop ways of controlling pollution in the country, they should use modern machines which do not pollute the environment in terms of noise, air and water pollution. For instant the company can reduced air pollution by neutralized gases which are discharge to the air. These gases are harmful to the human health because when they mixed with rain water, they can cause acidic rain which is not fit for human consumption. They should ensure that other pollution such as water pollution are taken care off by disposing their industrial waste to appropriate places, and not disposing on rivers the way they were disposing in Lesotho and in southern Africa. Human resource manager should come up with effective means of controlling the pollution in the country. The human resource department should ensure that they observe the environmental measures, means of controlling environment and educates its employees on proper means of disposing industrial waste such as chemicals. The company should ensures that all aspect which causes pollution are taken care off, they should use the latest technology which do not emit a lot of cases into the air, neutralize the waste chemicals before disposing them on the appropriate places (Jauhari and Mishra 126-128). The company should at any time embrace corporate social responsibility in their mission statement; they should integrate all the efforts of different department within the company towards achievement of company’s mission. The human resource manager should clarify the vision strategies on how to attained objectives of the company; mission statement. This will facilitate the company to improve the company’s image, develop a long term relationship with the community and improve the perception of the community towards the company. These can be achieved by providing services to the community, participating in social works in the community. For example, the Gap Company had involved them selves in AIDs program. This could not only improve the company’s image but also improve the customers’ loyalty toward the company (McDaniel and Gitman 97) In conclusion, the company should that by involving the company in the pollution issues, they are damaging the image of the company, lower its integrity, making it to be positioned as a company with poor management system, which could lead the company to loose it reputation in the market. This could result to negative performances of the company due to low sales. The company should recover from this problem, to avoid loosing its market share and at the same time the customers could easily loose trust on the company. The other possible impact on the company is that the company could be sued by the environmental department for pollution of the environment (Curtin 34). These could be very expensive for the company, because the company will have to spend a substantial amount of money in court cases. The human resource manager should strive to reverse this adverse trend by focusing on the corporate social responsibility in the company, they ensure that they expand their project of ‘Red’ and ‘green’ which was aimed at reducing the spread of HIV AIDs to other sensitive fields such as eradication of poverty in the developing countries. This could improve the image of the company and be position positively as the company that aimed at maximizing the welfare of the community. Works Cited Russo, V. M. Environmental management. Los Angeles: SAGE. 2008. (3) 98-100 Lundan, M. S. and Dunning, H. J. Multinational enterprises and the global economy. UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. 2008. (3) 77-79 Bogardus, A. Professional in Human Resources Certification. New York: John Wiley and Sons. 2009. (6) 110-116 Fletcher, K. Sustainable fashion and textiles. Earthscan. 2008 (3) 88-89 Andersson, L. and Levi, L. population, environment, and quality of life. 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