Corporate Social Responsibility

The following extract is taken from an essay produced on the topic of Corporate Social Responsibility

SCR & Business Ethics

Even though in the past corporations were regarded as playing a single economic profit making role, this view has been challenged and changing over the last two decades. As argued by Moore (2003) and Velasquez (2003) organisations do not simply constitute as business systems whose role is to create profit but they are widely more responsible about the social environment in which they execute their practices. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a field of study that explores the relationship between an organisation and its stakeholders (Kaller, 1993).

However, as figure 1.1 illustrates the stakeholders of a company are not the immediate customers or shareholders who benefit out of the business practices. Stakeholders are the larger social entities which can be affected but also affect the organisation. According to Carroll & Buchholtz (2000) “Corporate social responsibility encompasses the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic expectations placed on organizations by society at a given point in time” (p.35). Business Ethics has been closely discussed with SCR in the context of the operationalisation of the ethical values that corporations claim to aspire. Emphasis in the literature has been given in the difference between the rhetoric of Business Ethics and how it is found to be distant from the reality of the organisations’ practices.