1. Corporate Social Responsibility
BOH4M

2. The Positives Good things businesses do? Meet our needs/wants
Generate wealth
Create jobs
Innovate

3. The Negatives Bad things businesses do? Pollution
Sweatshops/child labour
Fraud
Consumerism

4. Stakeholders
Who is affected by the actions of a business?

5. Stakeholders Owners/shareholders Employees Customers
Buyers and Suppliers
The community

6. Social Responsibility
Related to “corporate citizenship” and business ethics
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) means taking your duty to all stakeholders, especially the community as a whole, seriously

7. Social Responsibility
Doing good things
Donating goods, services, or money to charities
Sponsoring public service ads
Not doing bad things
Being environmentally responsible
Safe working conditions and fair wages
Transparency and accountability

8. Why CSR? Owner(s) feel strongly about it
Good publicity = good for business
Tax deductions
The right thing to do
Companies should solve the problems they cause
Ex: pollution
Keeps the government out of business
Increased market share

9. The case against CSR
Improving the community should be the responsibility of the public sector
Diminishes profit to owners/shareholders
Makes business less competitive
Increases costs
A company’s social obligations are discharged when it pays taxes
Businesses may exert too much influence over charitable causes
Responses to these arguments?

10. Principles The Charity Principle The Stewardship Principle
Two key principles are at the heart of CSR:
The Charity Principle
The Stewardship Principle

11. The Charity Principle The wealthy have a responsibility to the poor
Corporations are large, powerful, and wealthy “citizens”, and should therefore take up social causes
Stems from early 1900s American tycoons Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller who contributed large sums of money to charitable organizations

12. The Stewardship Principle
When business executives think of themselves as trustees of society
Company must ensure that society benefits from their actions, rather than being hurt by them
Recognize that company is not a closed system – if affects (and is affected by) its environment
Must balance the interests of multiple stakeholders

13. Case Study
Malden Mills