Free Business Dissertations - Undergraduate Essay corporate Social Responsibility q. Why Are
UNDERGRADUATE ESSAY
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
TITLE
Q. Why are companies adopting corporate social responsibility policies and to what
extent is this movement changing the role of business in society?
This essay argues that two principal factors are leading companies to adopt corporate social responsibility policies: coercion and a profound shift in company business philosophy. Western companies in the 1990’s have been coerced into greater consideration of social responsibility by three main factors: government legislation, demographic and societal transformations (for instance the pensions crisis), and by deep changes of opinion e towards companies by Western general publics. Evidence for the first type of coercion may be seen across America, Britain, France, Germany and other European nations where the parliaments and congresses have passed extensive corporate social responsibility legislation legislation which defines the legal responsibilities towards social responsibility that a company has to abide for it to operate in a particular country. Government legislation may be understood as a response to the pressure exerted by a second type of coercion: that of demographic and societal change. The clearest example of such change is the pensions crisis presently blighting American and European governments. This crisis is the result of a huge increase in the elderly and non-working populations of these countries, and of a decades-long lack of government and company investment in pensions schemes. But in 2005, confronted with the immediacy of the pensions problem, companies and governments via their legislation are being coerced into radical and comprehensive action to prevent a disastrous hiatus of social responsibility. A third, more subtle type of coercion is that effected by the changed attitudes of Western general publics towards the role of business in society. Precipitated by ever greater media scrutiny of corporate activitymost obviously its coverage of business scandals such as Enron, WorldCom, Parmalat and so onWesterners now demand that companies adhere to far stricter and higher standards of social responsibility than at any other time in history.
This change in attitude amongst the general public has engendered a similarly profound shift of attitude amongst the business community itself. Companies now understand that they can no longer pursue profits alone, while wholly ignoring their social responsibilities, without such a pursuit bringing a company severe animosity and harmful attack upon its reputation by the shareholders, workers and customers affected by this pursuit. Rather, modern companies realise that their reputation, and thus their profits, depend just as much upon their dedication to improving social responsibility for their workers and for society at large, as upon their generation of revenue.
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