2. What is corporate responsibility?
Business and society
What is corporate responsibility?
Laura Olkkonen
Lappeenranta University of Technology
South Karelian Institute

3. Responsibility of business?
United Nations: ”A company’s delivery of long-term value in financial, social, environmental and ethical terms.”
Finnish Ministry of Employment and Economy: ”…responsibility for one’s own societal effects. These effects can deal with, for example, the rights of the local people, employees or customers, environmental protection, financial sustainability and human rights.
2 minute discussion with the person next to you: what responsibilities do companies have, to whom they should be responsible, what counts as irresponsibility?
corporate responsibility, corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, sustainability, business ethics, environmental responsibility, social responsibility

4. Role of business in society
production
services
research & development
use resources, make products and offer services, employ people

5. Importance of business
43 of the 100 biggest economic entities of the world are companies (list from year 2011)
Russia 10th on the list, Finland number 43
big companies can have international, even global impacts, but also small companies can have significant effects on peoples’ lives

6. Why business should care about responsibility?
society and its members are bound not only by laws, but by moral and ethical rules
moral is the sense of right and wrong, ethics explains or describes what moral should be
companies are members of the society and the society defines
what companies can or cannot do (law)
what companies should or should not do (moral & ethics)
being responsible is part of a company’s reputation that determines:
if one wants to buy company’s products/services
if one wants to work for a company
if one wants to cooperate with a company
- the same way as in personal relationships

7. Owners Customers Government Media Neighbors/ local community Employees
different stakeholders, different responsibilities
Associations
Partners

8. Forms of corporate responsibility
DOING A LITTLE
DOING A LOT
philantrophy
social entrepreneurship

9. video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvp2cu2l0N0

10. How people can influence companies?

11. The responsible consumer
influences by choosing carefully what she/he buys:
buys durable products that use resources sparingly and includes as little amount of harmful ingredients as possible
environmentally friendly products
ethically produced products
products for long-term use
products that are necessary
consuming as identity

12. Think of a company you know: what kind of responsibilities and effects it has?