Corporate Social Responsibility: An Evaluation of Its Relevance in the 21st Century - Research Paper Example

Corporate social responsibility is a concept that helps set the parameter on what can be described as a ‘good’ or ‘moral’ behaviour of an organisation (Robbins, 2008). It aids in judging the ethical or moral behaviour of an organisation which encompasses the social and ethical domains and not just the narrow economic perspective (Carroll, 1999).  CSR is not a new ideal, in fact, the need for companies to respond to social calls or demands begun during the 1930s (Hemingway, 2002), but the concept was only given considerable prominence in business kinds of literature after World War II (Campbell, 2007).

 In simple words, CSR is the concrete effort and response of organisations as they try to make the world a better place. In contrast, Milton Friedman (1970), clarifying CSR, claims  “ …that responsibility is to conduct business in accordance with their desires, which generally will continue to make as much money as possible while conforming to their basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom” (p. 2). In fact, Friedman (1970) even opined that it would be unethical for managers to concern themselves with other issues apart from securing the interests of the company’s shareholders.

As such, this reaffirms the conventional belief that what drives an organization is the acquisition of more profits and securitization of their position in the market economy. In this case, CSR is considered as the enlightened self-interest and that managers are not moral agents but are economic rational agents protecting the shareholder funds (Devinney, 2009; Jensen, 2001; Siegel, 2009).  Globalization, rapid developments in the field of information and communication technologies, changing social consciousness, the inception of human rights and other social movements are some of the many changes that were simultaneously happening in the world (Suarez-Orozco and Qin-Hilliard, 2004) and these changes contribute to the transformation of the global business environment (Porter and Kramer, 2006).