about corporate social responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility is an initiative that encourages companies to be mindful of the impact of their business on the rest of society, especially the world of their own stakeholders. The strategy is considered to contribute to sustainable growth by delivering benefits to all stakeholders on social, economic, and environmental levels.

Wide Variety of Issues

Corporate social responsibility is a policy that aims to solve a wide variety of issues. The strategy addresses concerns such as corporate policy, environmental impact, working environments, sustainable growth contribution, health, and safety. Corporations have the sole responsibility of providing profits for the stakeholders and thus are not obliged to take part in corporate social responsibilities. However, companies should be accountable to the stakeholders as well as to the community for its operations and actions. The paper seeks to negate the theme statement that multinational corporation has no moral or social responsibilities to engage in corporate social responsibility programs. Notably, the idea of distributive justice and the current distribution of wealth is also included.

Advantages of Corporate Social Responsibility

Multinational corporations should have moral and social responsibilities to engage in corporate social responsibility programs. There are various forms of social responsibility agendas a company can run so as to benefit itself and the society. Environment-focused, community-based, human resources-based, and charity-based social responsibilities are some of the programs a company can run. Numerous advantages accrue to a firm that adopts social responsibility programs in addition to providing profits to the stakeholders of their businesses.

Improved Company Image

Improvement in the image of the company is one of the most common advantages that accrues to a form that implements corporate social responsibility policies (Allouche, 2006). The firm can increase its goodwill value which is beneficial to the company. Firstly, the increased goodwill due to the clean and healthy image improves the potential customer’s willingness to buy from the firm. Secondly, the improved image increases the chances of potential business partners who are willing to be associated with the enterprise. The act makes the company grow and join the like-minded business to make profits for the stakeholders. Notably, the corporation’s prestige enters a higher level and becomes synonymous with goodness and reliability.

Attraction and Retention of Employees

Corporate social responsibilities increase attraction and retention of employees of an organization. Remarkably, companies that adopt stable corporate social responsibility find it easy to hire and retain employees. Many people would like to work for corporations that take care of their needs by ensuring excellent working conditions and caring about their well-being. Both old, new and potential employees, all are on a need to work for a company that shows the compassionate attitude towards them (Gond & Moon, 2012). A business that extends fair appraisals to their employees assists its workers in the hour of need and gives proper attention and recognition of personal employee achievements and raises to the occasion of individual workers special days such as the birthdays, end up having more employee retention and attraction. The benefit is crucial, especially in times when the labor market is tight. During such times, the business is saved from the extra cost of training new recruits, and it is protected from the cost of advancing incentives to the current employees to retain them. Notably, in the end, the business can reap the benefits of increased workers’ output. Therefore, companies can reap more profits when employees are happy and satisfied with their greater efficiency in production.

Less Hostile Regulatory Authorities

Remarkably, regulatory authorities become less hostile to companies with strong corporate social responsibilities. The authorities have no reason to carefully scrutinize the businesses due to their good public image as compared to companies without any corporate social responsibilities. Notably, the bodies become more lenient to the regulations of markets since they have a common feeling that the forms have been complying with all the rules and regulations. Additionally, the support the companies get from people of goodwill and partnership with other firms makes the businesses more reliable and dependable by the authorities. Many corporate social responsibility programs are designed in a way that they follow the stipulated rules and regulations of the business establishment, and thus many companies that adopt the programs end up following suit the laws so as to reap the benefits they offer. Extraordinarily, authorities are known to provide first-track preference to companies that execute corporate social responsibility programs. In most occasions, when there are cumbersome bureaucratic procedures to set up projects adopted by firms that execute the program, they ate favored by the authorities since they believe that the projects will be beneficial to the company and the general society at large.

Increased Capital Inflow

Additionally, corporate social responsibilities enable businesses to attract more capital inflow from various sources. The origin of the funds arises from potential investors that are impressed by the image of the firm. A business that is engaged in corporate social responsibility programs can enjoy a massive boost to their public image, and thus potential investors can invest in the firm heavily (Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Restructuring and Firm’s Performance, 2010). Notably, the positive view can attract foreign institutional investors that invest in the companies and thus help them to earn foreign exchange. Moreover, other firms get the confidence of investing in the business, thus helping in its growth, and the name of the company becomes a trusted brand.

Encouragement of Career Development

A company that practices corporate social responsibilities to the surrounding population has the benefit of encouraging both professional and personal career development. If a company is involved in corporate social responsibilities, the employees get the chance to learn new skills that could be used in the workplace. By undertaking duties that are outside the usual office work, the employees get the opportunity to get in areas they are passionate about and the knowledge and skills acquired in the field can go a long way to uplifting the quality of their work. Therefore, by adopting the programs, the corporations encourage employee growth and development. Notably, the external exposure of the workers may lead to innovation from the ideas and challenges experienced when executing the corporate social responsibilities.

Distributive Justice and Wealth Distribution

The idea of distributive justice addresses the issue of fair allocation of resources among the diverse community members. The aspect covers the areas of the methods, procedures, and pattern of distribution of the resources. The notion of distributive justice also includes the issue of sharing problems of an individual with the whole society. The resources and wealth in the community are always limited, and thus the major question that arises is how to come up with procedures to share the resources equally. Need, equity, and equality are the standard criteria that are used in determining how to distribute the resources. People in the community have a difference in the levels of their need, and thus the goods cannot be distributed equally among the members. The criteria of equity bring about the aspect of sharing the products and services in agreement with member contribution. Members of the community that contribute more get a bigger share. Distributive justice brings about the various fair distribution of wealth that leads to advancement in different social goals. However, for the dream to be realized, the community must function efficiently and keep its membership in addition to engaging in efficient and productive production so as to uphold the well-being of its members. In many economies in the world, the wealth gap between the rich and the poor is huge, and the contributing factor is the distributive justice and subsequent current distribution of wealth. Therefore, many governments in the world need to embrace the concept of distributive justice so as to mitigate the gap and ensure that the levels of corruption are kept to the minimum so as to alleviate the issue of taxpayers’ money embezzlement.

Conclusion

In conclusion, corporations should have moral and social responsibilities to engage in corporate social responsibility programs. Notably, numerous advantages accrue to a firm that adopts corporate social responsibility programs in their calendar. Therefore, the companies should not engage only in taking part in projects that generate income to the company only, but they should also embrace projects that aim at impacting the surrounding population positively. Finally, distributive justice and the subsequent distribution of wealth are key notions in the economy that have a high impact on the nature of lives people live. In many nations in the world, many business personnel’s seek to enrich themselves and end up gathering wealth at the cost of the poor people. Therefore, when distributive justice is adopted, many of the inequalities in wealth distribution could be avoided.

References

Allouche, J. (2006). Corporate social responsibility. Hampshire [u.a.]: Palgrave Macmillan.

Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Restructuring and Firm’s Performance. (2010).

Gond, J. & Moon, J. (2012). Corporate social responsibility. London [u.a.]: Routledge.