The Australian Red Cross - Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility - Case Study Example

Running Header: Corporate Social Responsibility Case Study Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Name & Code: Date of Submission: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 2 Organizations Analysis 3 History 3 Mission/aim 4 Size 4 Work 5 Achievements 6 Critical Analysis of Management Aspects 7 Leadership 7 Ethics and corporate social responsibility 9 Recruitment of volunteers 11 Staff morale and motivation 12 Recommendations 13 Conclusion 14 References 15 Introduction Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a type of corporate self-regulation incorporated into a business model. It concerns how the organizations manage their business operations and processes towards producing a positive impact on the community. It involves a continued commitment by organizations towards behaving ethically as well as contributing to development that is economically based while improving the life quality of the their employees and their families and that of the entire society. The policies of CSR acts as a mechanism that is in-built and self regulating whereby organizations scrutinizes and ensure is actively complies with the ethical standards, spirit of the law and international norms. Corporate Social responsibility is inclusion of public interest into the decision making of the corporate while honoring the profit, people, and planet. This report will analyze how Red Cross organization and Salvation Army in Australia contribute to the society in terms of relief aids. It will analyze various management operations undertaken in them. The report will also recommend the way $200,000 funds should be distributed among the two humanitarian organizations. Organizations Analysis History The Australian Red Cross is among several national Red Cross societies in the world. Australian Red Cross was established in 1914 immediately after the start of World War 1. Lady Helen Ferguson who was wife of Governor General Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson established it. This was after she formed a British Red Cross branch. The organization grew very fast whereby New South Wales had 88 suburban branches and 249country branches by November 1914. Its headquarters are based in Melbourne as stated by Australian Red Cross (2011). The Salvation Army in Australia started 125years ago. In September 1880, John Gore and Edward Saunders led the initial meeting of Salvation Army in Australia in Adelaide Botanic Park. Although they had no theological training, John and Edward invited small audiences to Salvation Army meetings where several people agreed to come. The organization faced some violent resistances initially as illustrated by The Salvation Army (2011). However, by 1890s, the attacks had reduced and by 1900s, Salvationists were accepted within the society. Mission/aim The Australian Red Cross main purpose or focus is humanitarian aid. It assists those who are faced with various types of disasters including natural disasters such as flood, fire, and drought. The Red Cross of Australia Mission is to “become a leading Australian humanitarian organization, improving the lives of those vulnerable by delivering services and promoting humanitarian values and laws”. Its main purpose is to protect lifes and health while ensuring respect for human being. It also plays a great role in promoting friendship, understanding, co-operation, and peace among the people as stated by Australian Red Cross (2011). The Salvation Army in Australia has an aim of preaching Jesus Christ’s Gospel as well as meeting the human needs in his name without discriminating. The mission of Salvation Army is to transform lives, reform society, make disciples, and care for people. Its vision is to see a growing loving community of people who are dynamically living God’s mission in the broken globe as illustrated by The Salvation Army (2011). Size Australian Red Cross Society has more than 23,500 members, 28,573 volunteers and 1,862 staff according to 2008-2009 national statistics. It carries out its operations throughout the Australian states including New South Wales, Queensland, Northern Territory, Australian, Capital Territory, Victoria, Western Australia, Victoria, and Tasmania as stated by Australian Red Cross (2011). Salvation Army is an international organization that works throughout the world. It has 56 Territories around the world and two territories in Australia including Eastern Territory (NSW, Qld, and ACT) and Australian Southern Territory (NT, WA, SA, Tas., & Vic.) with its headquarters in Melbourne as illustrated by The Salvation Army (2011). They are 350 Corps within Australia which are equivalent to church and usually acts as community centre. Work Australian Red Cross Society has various roles that it carries out within the society. This include providing services during disaster and other community services, it also traces and offers various humanitarian services to refugees, it offers first aid health services to those affected as well as getting donated blood from the people within the people willing to donate in the society as stated by Australian Red Cross (2011). The organization also supports and runs various types of crucial projects like program youth as well as raising awareness to the society in Australia concerning current issues or problems that are likely to affect them. Salvation Army of Australia carries out various services throughout Australia. Some of its work includes assisting the aged people within the society. Other work include community and family support, counselling, disability services, assisting those affected and addicted to drugs and alcohol, assisting the homeless, youth issues, providing pastor programs, social programs, drought relief, emergency services, and tracing the families of the lost people as argued by Trevor (2007). Achievements Australian Red Cross society has been able to address various issues and problems affecting society in cases of disasters. It has also been able to establish various projects including disaster and emergency services, first aid projects, and youth and education projects within the society. It has been able to collect over 1,326,252 blood donations from blood donors according to 2008-2009 data. In 2008, it assisted over 90,000 people responding to over 250 emergencies as stated by Australian Red Cross (2011). Salvation Army in Australia has been able to achieve a lot by assisting those who are in need in the society. It finds jobs for hundreds of people through the Salvation Army Employment Plus. Salvation Army has been able to assist those who have been in need in the society. It has also been able to come up with effective recovery plans as well as launching flood assistance measures to people affected by the floods. It has assisted those people affected by the floods and storms in Australia as illustrated by The Salvation Army (2011). It has played a great role in providing assistance to those affected by great fires that usually occurs in various parts within Australia regions. It is through Salvation Army that thousands of people have been assisted in Australia. In 2002 during the terrorist attacks in Bali, Salvation Army played a key role in assisting hundreds of Australians affected. During Thedbo landslide that killed 17people in NSW, Salvation Army assisted in rescue efforts as well as providing help to rescue-workers and families affected by providing them with basic necessities. Critical Analysis of Management Aspects Leadership It is the process by which people are socially influenced in an effort to accomplish a common task. It is organizing a group of people towards the achievement of a common objective. There has been various theories produced that involves leadership traits including functional, behavioural, power, situational interaction, value, charisma, intelligence, and visionary theory as illustrated by Peter, David & Grant (2006). The varying approaches to leadership styles are usually based on varying assumptions and theories. The styles used by individuals are usually based on combination of preferences, organizational culture, values, and beliefs. The types of leadership developed include participative, transactional, charismatic, and situational among others. Functional leadership involves putting passions and energy in everything while caring about others and wanting them to succeed as argued by Laurie (2005). Transactional leadership on the other hand assumes that people are usually motivated through punishment and rewards. It assumes that subordinates should always do what the managers want. Situational leadership is dependent of situational factors including capability of followers and motivation. Participative leadership involves all people when making decisions and working collaboratively as a team. Charismatic leadership involves use of personality and charms other than authority and power to win people. Mr Greg Vickery who is the president of Australian Red Cross Functional theory is crucial in addressing particular behaviours by the leaders that are expected to contribute to unit or organizational effectiveness. According to this theory, the main role of the leader is to ensure that all the necessary needs and requirements are met. Therefore, the leader is said to have done well the job if he satisfactorily to the effectiveness and cohesion of the team. At Australian Red Cross society, leaders have a crucial role of ensuring the requirements of those in need are achieved. The leaders at Australian Red Cross led by Chief Executive Officer ensures that all staff and volunteers are provided with the basic information and other necessities in ensuring they are able to perform in their day to day basis. Leaders at Australian Red Cross uses transformational leadership styles in ensuring the volunteers and staff are inspired. They usually inject energy and enthusiasm and energy to the volunteers and other staff. Greg Vickery who is the president of Red Cross Association, Robert Tickner who is the CEO as well as Her Excellency, Quentin Bryce are transformational leaders who inspires their followers in the institutions towards providing services that will be helpful to people. All the members of the board play a key role in ensuring that volunteers are inspired in an effort to meet the required satisfaction of providing relief services. Functional theory also plays a key role at Salvation Army as Chaplains contributes greatly towards the performance of the organization. It is through passion that chaplains are able to persuade and motivate their staff towards improving their services delivery to the affected people as well as those people who require services. Chaplains do not use charismatic way of leadership in ensuring that they lead their staff and other volunteers through the use of personality and not authority or the power they possess. Salvation Army is another organization where leadership skills plays key role towards the achievement of the organization mission and goals. It is through the inspiring and motivational leadership that Salvation Army is able to deliver its services to the society as argued by Trevor (2007). It is through those types of leadership that more volunteers are able to dedicate their efforts more towards giving the necessary services to the society. Salvation Army has several centres that are headed by Chaplains who are usually charismatic leaders and they encourage people to contribute greatly towards providing the required services. Chaplains are known to provide assistance to many people especially in hospitals. They usually lead as examples to their staff or followers. Ethics and corporate social responsibility Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a type of corporate self-regulation incorporated into a business model. It concerns how the organizations manage their business operations and processes towards producing a positive impact on the community. It involves a continued commitment by organizations towards behaving ethically as well as contributing to development that is economically based while improving the life quality of the their employees and their families and that of the entire society as argued by Laurie (2005). According to stakeholder theory, CSR should require companies to take into consideration all stakeholders’ interest including community, environment, employees, suppliers, consumers, and investors in discharging their profit-oriented activities. The ideas of assisting the poor or needy via philanthropy or charity with wealthy available within the society is not a new thing. CSR is one of such concept that ensures the needy are assisted or provided with what they need and cannot afford. The objective of CSR is to embrace roles for the actions of organization and promote an impact that is positive through its activities on the communities, stakeholders, consumers, employees, all members of public sphere, and environment as illustrated by Rossi (2001). Australian Red Cross has corporate social responsibility as their main part of their business. They takes the stakeholders’ and community’s interest at their front in ensuring that those in need are assisted. It moves in areas where they are emergencies and where people cannot be able to assist themselves. It offers them assistance to those affected by such things like disasters and earthquakes. Red Cross is always there for those people in needs towards providing them with relief during the times of disasters and other vulnerable areas in Australia. Australian Red Cross manages their operations in an effort to provide assistance to those who are in need. It takes into consideration its stakeholders concern including staff and community. The organization has more than 60,000 volunteers who offer their free services to the society. Therefore, the organizations have to meet the satisfaction and psychological needs of these people by ensuring that the donations it receives from organizations are well used. Australian Red Cross ensures it meets its ethical objectives and goals through helping that part of society that is needy. These ethical practises ranges from giving breakfast for hungry people in everyday life to supporting the elderly and isolated within the community. Australian Salvation Army has main responsibility of ensuring they provide assistance to the needy in the society. It is guided by its ethics of providing those in dire need with appropriate assistance. The Salvation Army as an international evangelical part of universal Christian Church is guided by its principles and ethics in ensuring it meets the human needs in the name of Christ without discrimination. This is not only in Australia but in the entire world. It is ensures that the world lives as a community where those of dire need are assisted and cared for. Although it is not a profit making organization, it ensures that it gets enough financial funds and voluntary assistance in meeting its main objective of assisting those who are in need as argued by Trevor (2007). Corporate social responsibility and voluntary assistance forms a great part of its roles or responsibilities. Therefore, it does not take social responsibility as a part of CSR but as its main activity or responsibility. Recruitment of volunteers Recruitment of volunteers is one of the balancing acts whereby volunteer managers and managers of voluntary and humanitarian managers are engaged in. It involves inviting and attracting people towards being involved in the organization. This involves several stages in order to ensure capable and willing people are recruited. It usually starts with recruitment message, recruitment strategies, recruitment process, recruiting for diversity, and recruiting techniques. Recruitment message must be encouraging and inviting the people to join willingly into the organization. It should inform volunteers on the benefits of joining the voluntary institutions. The recruitment strategies on the hand involve two common strategies including targeted and non-targeted. Targeted recruitment involves looking for specific skills while non-targeted recruitment involves looking for general skills. Recruiting for diversity is a vital element for the recruitment plan as stated by Shanker (2010). Diversity is a vital aspect that drives humanitarian organizations. They are several recruitment techniques for recruiting people that includes mass media, public speaking, direct mails, newspaper articles, direct mail, membership outreach, volunteer center referrals, and websites among others. It is important for the managers of those organizations to realize that it is the number of people or volunteers who determine the extent to which the humanitarian organizations are able to deliver the expected services. Australian Red Cross carries out an extensive recruitment process in ensuring it attracts enough volunteers and who are skilled. Australian Red Cross partners will various organizations like Australian volunteers for international development program in trying to mobilize and get skilled and dedicated volunteers. They inspire people to join the international humanitarian organization towards saving life as stated by Shanker (2010). They encourage people that it is through joining their organization that they can gain new and diverse skills and knowledge. Red Cross recruits volunteers who willingly dedicates part of their time to assist the society. It usually carries out the process through its website or offices. It usually advertises these opportunities through its website. Salvation Army is another organization that undergoes through the same process of recruiting the volunteers in Australia. Salvation Army recruits its volunteers through the internet where is urges people willing to join in volunteering work to register in their websites or their offices as stated by Shanker (2010). Salvation Army encourages people to join due to various benefits that they can achieve by joining the organization such as developing personal skills and making new friends. It encourages people wanting to join the volunteering job to register in their website and create an account. Staff morale and motivation Motivation is viewed as an instrinsic enthusiasm of employees towards accomplishment of various activities at work. Motivation is an aspect that exists in every person hence requires to be put into consideration seriously in every organization. Morale and motivation are the major aspects that determine how the organizations perform as well as their levels of productivity. Motivation is the one of the powerful emotion and drive towards performing successfully as illustrated by Rao (2008). The management and leaders have a role of stimulating motivation by sharing communication and vision as an important skill that managers take into their organizations. Volunteering is one just job that requires a lot motivation due to its nature. This is because there are no payments that are given to the employees. Therefore, there must a lot of motivations and morale building towards ensuring they perform and continue to dedicate their time and efforts to the organization. At Red Cross organization, employees and volunteers are given much control over their work and job experience. This motivates them and gives them a lot of motivation towards giving the expected services. Furthermore, they are provided or supplied with necessary materials, training, and other necessary resources in ensuring they get proper mastery of their job. This acts as a great motivation and morale to the workers in the organization that plays a great role towards the achievement of set objectives at the Australian Red Cross. At Red Cross organization, they are given the authority of making some decisions over their work. At Salvation Army organization, the motivating aspect is almost the same as Red Cross. The volunteers are offered adequate training and resources that enables them to become motivated. The volunteers are allowed to make decision and know everything that is being done within the organization management. There is high rate of interaction between the executive and senior managers at the Salvation Army that makes them become more motivated as illustrated by Rao (2008). This ensures that the objectives are attained and that performance is always high. Volunteers are always congratulated after good work. Managers and supervisors always communicate frequently, openly, and honestly to volunteers that give morale to work and dedicated their efforts even more. Recommendations It is crucial for the organization to distribute the $200,000 to all the two organizations; Red Cross and Salvation Army of the Australian. This will ensure that the people in the society are able to empower themselves towards alleviating poverty, facing the disaster challenges, and providing for the needy and aged as argued by Raymond (2009). However, Salvation Army is more involved with a lot of community work including providing home to homeless and assisting the aged. Therefore, there is need to allocate larger amounts of money such as 60percent of the money as compared to Red Cross. Red Cross provides services during disaster and other community services, it also traces and offers various humanitarian services to refugees, and it offers first aid health services to those affected. On the other hand, Salvation Army assists the aged people within the society; it provides community and family support, counselling, disability services, assisting drug and alcohol addicts, and assisting the homeless among others as analysed earlier. Salvation Army has a large number of volunteers as compared to Red Cross. Therefore, i would recommend that Salvation Army to get large amount of funds as compared to Red Cross due to its diversified humanitarian activities that require a lot of finances. This is because they all play a significant role towards the community and society development as well as organization overall development. Conclusion Corporate social responsibility assist community in ensuring it is able to sustain itself well. Corporate Social Responsible is the ongoing obligation by organizations and business to behave ethically and even contribute to economic development whereas improving workforce quality of life and that of the local community or the entire society Christine (2009). In order to undertake corporate social responsibility role, they are some crucial skills that require being in place. They include business skills, understanding society, building capacity, people skills, strategic view, harnessing diversity, stakeholder relationships, technical skills, and questioning business usual. Humanitarian organizations such as Australian Red Cross and Salvation Army play a great role in assisting the society hence the need to fund them in order for them to achieve the objectives. References Australian Red Cross 2011, Australian Red Cross, The power of Humanity, Viewed 8 May 2011, from http://www.redcross.org.au/default.asp Christine, A 2009, Corporate Social Responsibility: a case study approach, Massachusetts, Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. Laurie, J 2005, Management and organizational behaviour, Prentice Hall/Financial Times, New York. Peter, M., David, P., & Grant, J 2006, Contemporary issues in management and organizational behaviour, Thomson, New Delhi. Rao, P 2008, Management and organizational behaviour: text, cases and games, Himalaya Publishing House, London. Raymond, W 2009, Sustainable Economy: Corporate, Social and Environmental Responsibility, World Scientific, New York. Rossi, S 2001, Caring and doing for others, Social responsibility in the domains of Family, work, and community, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.  Shanker, A 2010, ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’, Business Review Journal, vol. 8, no 3, pp. 45-67. The Salvation Army 2011, The Salvation Army, Viewed 8 May 2011, from http://www.salvationarmy.org.au/SALV/HOMEPAGE/HOME.html Trevor, H 2007, The Salvation Army Year Book 2008, Salvation Army, Sydney. Read More