Corporate Social Responsibility - Understanding CSR-Interpretation - Research Paper Example

 Contents Contents 2 1.Introduction and Historical Developments In CSR 3 2. Understanding CSR-Interpretation 5 2.1 CSR Disclosures 7 2.1.1 CSR Strategy 7 2.1.2 General Challenges of CSR 8 2.1.3 Examples of CSR Activities 9 2.2 Theoretical Debate 10 3. CSR Model-Approaches and Challenges to CSR 10 4.CSR in Action 11 5Module Design 15 6Ethics Embedment 15 6.1 Standards for Business Ethics 16 7Corporate Governance 17 7.1 Integration 18 7.2 The Impact of Post Traditional Corporate Governance over Businesses 20 7. Conclusions and Discussions 21 21 References 22 1. Introduction and Historical Developments In CSR Changes are essential for the progress of organizations. The established institutions particularly national ones and governance procedures are eroding in the wake of the increasing globalization (Beck-Gernsheim and Beck, 2002; Sethi, 2002) which has subverted the conventional distinction postulation of a distinction between the private and the public spheres (Scherer and Palazzo, 2007). Corporate world is expanding and thus, the corporations have to explicate their vision and purpose that even includes social and environmental considerations. Companies are suspected to get socially aware and responsible even out of the scope of their business (Matten and Crane, 2005). Corporations are responding differently to this development which has posed new dilemmas for them. Some organizations have implanted some changes in their daily routine and culture keeping in view the significance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for their businesses (Bhattacharya et al., 2004), although most of the times, the objective of the companies is to optimize the shareholder value (Weaver et al., 1999). Literature on Corporate Social Responsibility illustrates this clash between the instrumental comprehension of corporate social responsibility in a conventional approach to business and the latest comprehension of the responsibilities of a firm. The conventional approach to business is to formulate the conceptual work and emphasize on the analysis of business society at the macro level (Lozano, 2006). Palazzo and Scherer (2008) explained the politicization of the post positivist approach by discussing the paradigm shift from the depoliticized business activities towards politicization of corporations. Even though, these authors essentially explained structural and macro political aspects, however internal institutional factors should also be analyzed to construct the way in which the organizations apprehend their contribution to the society (Basu and Palazzo, 2008). Mirvis and Googins (2006) have indicated the significance of analyzing this process in the form of activity driven relationship by discussing the firm’s perspective of what it does or does not. However, none of these authors provided enough arguments for the factors activating the process of change nor they determined that how these factors contribute to the various paths of change. Dalla Costa (1998), Doh and Stumpf (2005) argued how leadership determine the directions for change. In spite of the role of change agents (Maak and Pless 2006), the significance of isomorphism (Fombrun and Shanley 1990) is evident in the promotion of organizational change, however, these studies do not completely explain the challenges that the managers encounter in determining the new post national context and the intricacies involved in it. The issues faced by the managers in identifying the new role of the firm and in understanding the concept of CSR are actually responsible for the difference between the corporate responsibilities as assumed by the firm with those expected by the society (Maon and Swaen, 2009). Maitlis (2005) explained the sense making aspect which depicts the role of people in organizations in granting sense of their environments. Sense making is actually an interpretative method that is used to define uncertain environmental stimuli in terms of mental frames or cognitive schemas that makes sense out of those stimuli (Starbuck and Milliken, 1988). The variation in responses of different firms while encountering similar external demand can be explained through the assessment of interpretative schemas and mental frames. The sense making process of CSR illustrates the interactivity of CSR in corporations (Morsing and Schultz, 2006). Basu and Palazzo (2008) related the comprehension of the CSR interpretative process to the character of the organization whereas Maon and Swaen (2009) related it to the affiliation between internal and external stakeholders. These studies classify the sense making process without taking in to account the practicalities and complexities of the firms. 2. Understanding CSR-Interpretation The role of the organization in affecting the social, economical and political pattern of development - integrated with its seldom negative influences over certain customers, employees and communities – has been regarded as a drawback for a corporation’s potential to increase its wealth (Post et al., 2002). Thus, corporations impose both contributions and complications to the society. The fundamental questions that keeps on arising in every era of time is: what is the responsibility of a corporation and to whom it relates to (Post et al., 2002). Organizations are generally believed to be socially committed in the areas which are not even linked to their business or business activities (Matten and Crane, 2005). Such problems are addressed in the fields of social issues of management (SIM), society and business, business ethics, CSR and stakeholder theory. CSR has been evaluated in this paper since it addresses the social issues at the level of corporate debate (Logsdon and Wood, 2002). Scherer and Palazzo (2007) have studied the two different approaches to CSR – positivistic approach and post positivistic approach- which are explained in further sections. Corporate Social Responsibility was first proposed in the year 1924 by Oliver Sheldon, Oury text Shelton. CSR has now formed its business community, corporate law, social and academic guidelines that are extensively used in academic circles and has become the focal point in the academic sector. In relation to defining corporate social responsibility, the IBLF (International Business Leaders Forum) has defined CSR in a comparatively simpler way as business operations should: protect nature and environment, be transparent and open, respect the labor community, be ethical create value for the shareholders and for the whole community as well. According to various comprehensive CSR studies conducted by different scholars in this field, the significance of CSR and its interpretation can be based upon five main aspects that are listed below: 1. Corporate social responsibility ensures that the business operations must comply with treaties protecting natural resources, environment and ecology. 2. CSR ensures that corporations do respect ethics, morality and norms. 3. CSR makes corporations abide by the economic law to maintain their reputation. 4. CSR gives importance to health, welfare and safety of employees in organizations. 5. Corporate social responsibility creates the sense of love towards community, taking initiatives and promoting people welfare undertakings. Corporate social responsibility opens a new door towards enterprise enlightenment as enterprises now pay special attention to other members of society and environment along with attaining their economic goals. Corporate or social responsibility assumes interests towards the betterment and development of the entire society. It is all about making the world and its environment, a better place to live for everyone. Enterprises perform several philanthropic activities and profoundly take part in the welfare of people showing their commitment towards corporate social responsibility. 2.1 CSR Disclosures Although the disclosure of CSR activities is entirely up to the will of the company however various social benefits are gained through communicating this information to different publics that include employees, shareholders or beneficiaries, customers, media, suppliers and the government. Thus, it has been observed that CSR disclosures have been classified in to a number of categories with the vision of enhancing the development of CSR disclosure index. The basic three categories of CSR disclosure are: Explanation of the CSR strategy for the company. General Challenges of CSR. Examples of CSR Activities. 2.1.1 CSR Strategy Companies that include CSR section in their annual reports provide their CSR strategy in terms of guidelines or vision statement or information on a CSR committee. Publicis Groupe, Dentsu and Havas are some examples of companies that have used vision statement to establish their CSR standard. Murphy (1998) interpreted such statements as a very important tool for communicating CSR objective both internally and externally. For instance, the vision statement of Havas discloses the significance of the civic and corporate responsibilities of the company, describes the CSR areas at which the company is focusing on and explains the strategy that company will embed to carry out these CSR activities. On the other side, the vision statement of Dentsu discloses the goal that the company expects to achieve through fulfilling its CSR commitments. The CSR commitment of Dentsu is ‘to acquire a reputation of trustworthiness, increase the competency of the company and attain sustainable development through stimulating the economy and improving the society’. The world’s leading advertising holding companies: Dentsu, WPP Group and Havas prominently declared the presence of the committee responsible for the CSR activities on behalf of their respective companies. This information was comprised of the members of the committee with their designations in the company and the person(s) in the company to which the committee has to report. This shows the significance of CSR in the corporate structure and in the overall strategy of the company. A link was also provided if there exists a set of rules or an ethical code of conduct to be obeyed for those interested in knowing this information.WPP group and Dentsu have discussed their own ‘code of business’ in the websites: www.wpp.com and www.dentsu.com/profile/csr , respectively whereas Havas included information on Global Compact and provided a web site link, www.unglobalcompact.org for more information since Havas is a member of UN Global Compact. 2.1.2 General Challenges of CSR Companies consider various CSR issues to be important and thus, declare them in their annual reports. These CSR challenges can be generally classified in to four main areas which are described below: Work Output This problem area specifically emphasizes over the impact of the company’s work in the market place and that the company follows ethical work practices. HR Activities This issue category includes various areas such as staff training, health and well being of the staff, staff volunteering and staff diversity. Social Commitment This challenge specifies activities that are related to the welfare of the society in general, for example, non profit organizations and charitable organizations. Environmental Initiatives This problem area focuses on the initiatives that are adopted in the organization to safeguard the environment and conserve valuable resources that includes minimizing the use of water, energy, paper and ink and use recycled material. For example, WPP (2005) declares that its most important CSR challenges are: employment, its work, and the social investment. On the other hand, Dentsu emphasizes over activities related to environment and Publicis Groupe discloses its pro-bono campaigns and community work in its annual report. Different companies will face different challenges in this problem area since each company will emphasize over its particular communication goals for the annual report. 2.1.3 Examples of CSR Activities The real examples of the company’s CSR activities are also included in its annual report in order to precisely evaluate what the company has done as part of its CSR strategy. This includes concise explanation of staff volunteer programs, advertisements’ graphics for the pro-bono campaigns for a certain non profit or charitable organization, etc. Particularly, Havas and Publicis Groupe included illustrations of print advertisements from the work of pro-bono for non profitable organizations such like Amnesty International and Medecins Sans Frontieres where as WPP included various CSR activities and it conducted along with the graphs, tables and charts to report the results of pro-bono work and donations by the company. 2.2 Theoretical Debate Among the various theoretical debates on CSR, the most interesting ones are the role of business in governance structures and the ways through which the companies communicate with the social actors in order to overcome the existing environmental and socio-economic challenges. At present, thsi CSR debate has beem more productibe in its descriptive aspect than in its precriptive dimension. Most of the CSR based researches emphasize over the definitions and dimensions of CSR insisting frequently on the nature of its rhetoric and semiotics. The assessment and measurement of instruments, codes of conduct, actions and methodologies constitute part of the descriptive analysis of CSR strategies with respect to the stakeholders. 3. CSR Model-Approaches and Challenges to CSR There are two approached towards CSR namely, positivistic approach and post-positivistic approach. Positivistic approach deals with the instrumental way in which organizations perceive and integrate CSR in to their operations. It unfolds casual relationships and interaction of the organization with the society by employing empirical procedures from natural sciences. Studies use this approach to illustrate apparent social phenomena and achieve specific outcomes through applying the resulting information on to the managerial practice. This leads to the classification of corporate responsibility that corresponds to the economic theory of the organization (Scherer and Palazzo, 2007). The objective of this approach is to present a unique perspective of firm’s collective efforts for fulfilling its obligations towards the society (Wartick and Cochran, 1985). Generally, three issues are discussed, in this respect, which are: social expectations for the firms, the methods adopted by companies to fulfill such expectations and the significant outcomes of such methods. Models for Corporate Social Performance (CSP) incorporate these three issues and determine the societal expectations defining the responsibility of a company towards society will regulate the methods of strategy construction and implementation covering the social characteristics of management (Scherer and Palazzo, 2007). These models are implicitly aimed towards gathering technical information about the functionality of the organizations and their survival in the competitive world (Burrel and Morgan, 1979) although these models vary fundamentally while determining the organization’s role and its purpose of enhancing its performance. Post-Positivistic approach commonly determines the Do s and Don’ts of an organization. It is based upon various philosophies which include social contract theory, virtue ethics, post modernism and Habermasian critical theory. This approach basically develops different definitions which could cause confusion in understanding the organizational concepts. Often, the lack of consensus on the understanding or definition of the organizational concepts shrouded the discussions on the role of the organization towards the society (Carroll, 1979). 4. CSR in Action Various companies have formulated guidelines to successfully embed CSR in to their organizational structure. The Canadian government in this respect provides various useful, specific, detailed and relevant checkpoints and guidelines to support the organization during CSR embedment (Government of Canada, 2006). The Canadian guideline includes the significant role of the key stakeholders and employees of a company in the successful embedment of the CSR orientation. In spite of the fact that upper management plans the CSR strategy and direction however the employees and the middle management are actually the hands that practically embed the CSR in an organization. The role of the middle management is to implement the CSR plan as directed by the upper management by assuring that the resources are assigned and controlled appropriately, by checking the behavior and performance of the employees and by explaining the CSR strategy, if required, to their sub-ordinates reporting to them (Johnson & Scholes, 2002). Moreover, the middle management plays a vital role in communicating and executing the top down planned vision and CSR embedment. Employees represent their firm and often act as advocates, ambassadors and sources of new concepts and information on CSR on the contrary employees and suppliers can also cause problems for everyone if they are not appropriately engaged. Thus, the upper management and employees should effectively communicate and discuss about the CSR strategy and embedment leaving no ambiguities. Engaging employees in CSR embedment means to insist over increasing CSR awareness. Employees should know the background and context of the CSR approach of the organization, they should be motivated for getting involved in it, they should know the reason for adopting the particular approach, they should know the relevance of the adopted CSR strategy to the firm and to the firm’s objectives, the should know the impact of the CSR strategy on the firm’s existing approaches and other implications. Engaging employees in discussions about embedding the CSR commitments is a way for these stakeholders for establishing a sense of ownership and pride in the CSR activities of the firm (Government of Canada, 2006). The CSR training for employees could be used as a platform to create and increase CSR awareness while making it convenient for the employees to understand the influence of CSR issues on themselves and on their environment. 4.1 IKEA IKEA formulated its training program for Co-worker Environment and Social Responsibility as result of its first environmental action plan that was initiated in the year 1992. This training program included the IKEA’s globalized programs, environmental and social policies, goals and performances covering all areas of business operations such like carbon dioxide emissions, suppliers, transportation and management of waste, packaging and product design. The CSR training program of IKEA was created to illustrate the employees that how they can contribute in company’s efforts towards achieving its objectives in these areas. According to IKEA (2006), “There is a standardized training package, which is adapted per country. (…) That is a first step, to pass on a feeling about what IKEA does, training and communication overall are the means to pass on the feeling what is expected from a co-worker”. 4.2 PHILIPS According to Philips (2002), “Philips provides workshops [on sustainability] and is very busy with embedding [sustainability] in all training activities - for my own sustainability network placed on divisional and corporate level we have developed a separate corporate curriculum, a special learning program to look whether we meet the requirements and what we still have to learn. Next, we have a separate e-learning tool within the organization”. The element enthusiasm can be added to the CSR program through providing constant updates on the progress of the program. Another was for bringing enthusiasm to CSR program is to offer incentives such like rewarding or appreciating employees for suggesting relevant and new ideas, plans or solutions and to include the attribute of CSR performance in job description in order to reward employees for their achievements in this regard but also penalized for non conformance. The companies will be able to yield more sustainable organizational wealth through changing managers’ values only if the incentives are in accordance with this more understandable aspect of stakeholder’s expectations and contribution (Sachs & Ruhi, 2005). The Unilever (2006) terminated 66 people in 2005 and 89 people in 2004 for breaching their code. Philips offers the opportunity to their supplier to evaluate themselves on their own through a self assessment tool while Philips also asses the supplier itself and also trains them for always complying with the rules. Despite given this opportunity, if the supplier still does not improve himself and shows non compliance to rules consistently then the Philips is left with no other option except to terminate its association with that supplier (PHILIPS, 2005). Employees’ activities and corporate activities that do not comply with the formulated CSR strategy and CSR principles should be indentified in the initial stage or else it will harm the image of the organization. Thus, it is essential to implement processes and mechanisms enabling early identification, reporting and resolution of problems. For this purpose, firms can enable e-mail boxes, anonymous hotlines and ombudspersons (Government of Canada, 2006). The mechanisms for dealing with the problematic activities should be designed carefully to make sure that they work well and should be considered as the option of the last resort. Therefore, a senior manager should be held responsible to investigate and report compliance and non compliance of such issues. 5 Module Design Figure 1: CSR Module Design (Adapted from: World Bank Foreign Investment Advisory Service, 2006). 6 Ethics Embedment It has been found that the relationship between corporate social responsibility and business ethics is very complex. Business ethics usually suggests supporting and strengthening the legal framework that is already in use and endorses compliance with procedures and standards, overlooked by upper management, carefully assigning voluntary authority with in an organization, employees’ training, communication, monitoring and auditing systems and pertinent response to misconduct that follows disciplinary action and enforcement. In contrary to this, corporate social responsibility is related to other things that include provision of services and production and delivery of products in a manner pertaining to social and environmental responsibility where as business ethics are considered to be more internally focused and related with monitoring organizational structures determining individual behavior. But CSR initiatives basically engage all stakeholders in company’s decisions and deal with the queries and views of the external stakeholders. Thus, it is essentially vital to strongly integrate business ethics and CSR with in the management processes in order to avoid the potential conflict between the strategic goals and directions of the firm with the individual making ethical decisions. There are two prevailing thoughts on these issues. One view is about values tending to be basically compliance oriented and legalistic in practice. The other view is more related to social and environmental issues and corporate social responsibility. Ethical and sustainable management actions should be endorsed to ascertain that CSR practices and business ethics do not lose its significance. The real challenge of embedding ethics in CSR lies in building coalitions for taking action, managing the discussion among different stakeholder groups, and providing additional learning opportunities by executing action plans. 6.1 Standards for Business Ethics Huge number multilateral organizations have issued and endorsed many standards such as Global Sullivan Principles, U.N. Global Compact, etc. Standards are classified in to two categories: Process Standards include management systems and organizational processes for managing ethics with in a company. Content Standards are those that incorporate explicit requirements over ethical issues. A lot work has already been done in formulating standards that are acceptable worldwide and thus, more standards would abate the potential for established standards to be accepted more widely. Currently ethics standards do not hold the same position as the service and manufacturing standards do. There is still a long way to go for acquiring uniform standards around the globe in the fields of corporate accountability and business ethics. However, the existing standards should be further improved to be more effective and to fulfill the requirements of different sectors of the industry. 7 Corporate Governance CSR rhetoric develops the concept of business responsibility with conventional apprehension of corporate governance at odds. Corporate governance asserts that corporate legitimacy is judged through the potential of a company to increase its equity value where rights and responsibilities are appropriately distributed among the board, shareholder and director. Broader notions of goals and of agendas for achieving such goals are set out through the concept of CSR. As Shell maintain that “We commit to contribute to sustainable development. This requires balancing short and long-term interests, and integrating economic, environmental and social considerations into business decision-making” (Royal Dutch Shell, 2005). Also, the Chairman and CEO of GlaxoSmithKline states in their company’s report that it is challenging and in the best interest of their company to address the healthcare issues of the society and thereby, fulfill stakeholder expectations (GlaxoSmithKline: 2005). Similarly, the Chairman of Marks and Spencer’s, Paul Myners states in the M&S’s report of 2006 that they affirm that being responsible is good for both business and business sense. Although directors are not accountable to stakeholders as per the judgment of Hempel/Turnbull, however, British American Tobacco declares that “We are working for wider accountability to society, and engaging in constructive dialogue with stakeholders on the issues surrounding our products….Today, perhaps more than ever, society expects businesses to use their economic strength for broader social goals” (British American Tobacco, 2006). These statements infer that corporate powers should be legally distributed among the contractual actors of the company following the concept of corporate governance and should be based on the legitimacy laid by a much broader range of social forces following the notion of corporate social responsibility. Both these two concepts have been so widely separated from each other that different departments individually publish corporate responsibility reports and corporate governance reports with in the same business. 7.1 Integration There are three major disadvantages of this separation which are described below: 1. Modern firms exhibit role neurosis. The contemporary manger has to simultaneously deal with two seemingly irreconcilable categories of responsibilities. One set of such responsibilities is that of a governor and other set is that of a citizen. The manager has to conceptually and practically keep such demands separate due to which the potential conflict in these sets of responsibilities is never known. On the contrary, it is recommended to recognize the broad social goals as they are reconcilable with the narrow interests of the shareholder. For instance, the government of UK considers that CSR is as good for society as it is for business. The Directorate General of European Commission for industry and enterprise affirm that CSR integrates environmental and social interests in to corporate plans and operations (Department of Trade and Industry, 2007). The obstacles that may come up in such a project are not accepted anywhere in the business or policy discourse. 2. It is difficult to assess that what should be integrated and what should not, with out reforming the existing governance framework while addressing the social goals. CSR has to be embedded in to the existing drivers of corporate governance in order to integrate with business strategy. Most importantly, the absolute authority of shareholders suggests that new norms of non financial CSR have been accepted on their terms or not. It is possible to integrate CSR interests in to corporate governance only when shareholders believe in a long term enlightened notion of their self interest. 3. The segregation of CSR and corporate governance confers to the diffuse utopianism, which usually characterizes CSR as being disconnected from daily demands and realities of business. One perspective of this is the uncritical appropriation of other discourses of social responsibility by several CSR supporters such as that of citizenship. Due to these reasons the post traditional concept of corporate governance has been developed. The integration of the concepts of CSR in to the corporate governance is not possible until the goals of the two competing models are different from that of each others. The post traditional concept of corporate governance makes sure that the law and the social force of ethical and moral opinion bound the rule making process and no order or authority alone could govern that which actors will be involved in the corporation and how they will play. These changes of actors are constitutive of their power based upon the political scenario and upon these contexts of operations. It can also be stated that it is important to change the habit of discussing corporate governance in isolation from broader patterns and methods of social governance. 7.2 The Impact of Post Traditional Corporate Governance over Businesses Significant consequences are observed in the control and behavior of businesses due to the new forms of governance described above. The enthusiasm of business varies according to the purpose and method of its governance. It has found that there are numerous new procedural opportunities available for the stakeholders if the legal entitlements are socially and environmentally regulated in corporate governance in comparison to being incorporated through company’s law. It is difficult to measure the substantive changes in the financial and non financial performances of the corporations resulting from the new forms of private and public governance. The affects of post traditional corporate governance over conduct and behavior of businesses are set out in the following four discrete classes: stakeholder participation, transparency, accountability and organizational learning. 7. Conclusions and Discussions Collectively in the past few years, corporate social responsibility has transformed from its niche form in to an integral part of the corporate agenda. A wide range of activities, measures and initiatives with disparity in quality and effectiveness have been evolved all around the world. It will be a huge challenge in the future to focus, strengthen and bring together structural approaches and changes that have broad and deep impact on the society and business combined. Corporate social responsibility can be defined as a private contribution to the public space for the benefit of the people and environment at large. It is very important to merge the efforts of the private sector with the efforts of the civil society and government in particular for the sustainable development of social responsibility towards each other and towards the environment. In this multi-lateral co-operation, the support should be provided to those processes which has combined and elaborated sustainable strategies with in the scope of multi stakeholder processes. Corporate Social responsibility is capable of making significant contributions to all fields and industries. References Basu, K. and Palazzo, G.: 2008, 'Corporate Social Responsibility: A Process Model of Sensemaking', Academy of Management Review 33 (1), 122-36. Beck-Gernsheim, E. and Beck, U.: 2002, Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences, (Sage, London). 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