Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility

Question: Discuss about the Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility. Answer: Introduction: The CSR can be explained by completion of the four important responsibilities that need to be carefully maintained in order to make the society and the community develop trust on the organization. The first criterion is that the company should be finally making profit so in order to carry out the other responsibilities. The second criteria should be that it should maintain the legal responsibilities such as maintaining the environmental land the labor laws to prevent any legal complications. Ethically also the company should be responsible so that the consumers and the society can develop trust on them. These include being environmentally friendly along with giving proper respect and wages to the workers and others. Philanthropic responsibility involves charitable and donation activities engaging more people into this activity (Smallbusiness.chron.com, 2016). While providing more light on the issue one can select explanation of the term by other researchers. Social responsibility of a company thereby can be summarised as an initiative that yields a dual impact not only on the companys owner, shareholders and the stakeholders but also for the communities and the societies where people thrive. It helps the enterprises to earn more money, provide more jobs to people at the same time of churning out the best aspects for the societal picture to be perfect and peaceful. This usually covers two important arenas; the first one being creating maximum returns and investments through share values that would not only benefit the owners and the shareholders but also the other stakeholders as well(Europa.eu 2016). The other arena is proper identification and subsequent prevention and mitigation of the adverse effects that the enterprise might have on the society so that the relationship is built on trust and dedication. Corporation Social responsibility is seen to vary among various countries where each of the country has based its determinant depending upon the socioeconomic as well as political agendas. Many of them also priorities the environmental demands and the ecological base of the environment is maintained. A comparative analysis between different countries showed that Germans exhibited better environmental responsibility, which is similar in case of Austria as well. Columbian were less efficient in the field of maintain stable ecological field but Their Chilean counterparts were much better in their social responsibility. Political pressure on maintain the environmental responsibility resulted in betterment for Germans and Austria but since such pressure was not present for Latin America , so results were not much satisfactory. These show political influences play important role in CSR (Wagner and Vargas, 2015). Other researchers have also hold other countries like Portugal in this scenario. It was astonishing to see that even the Global financial crisis was efficiently handled by many Portugal companies, which were previously assumed to be not possible. The companies were able to maintain their CSR even in times of financial crisis because they redefined their criteria by paying more significance to society and community where increased unemployment and low kevel income were successfully managed. It was very efficient on the parts of the company to develop their CSR that showed a socially responsible attitude towards their stakeholders and meet their expectation in times of crisis (Dias et al. 2016). Studies have shown that companies having genuine commitments towards CSR have shown better developments and growths in the recent years in comparison to those who have not accepted CSR in their working environment. Many companies are utilizing CSR as mere marketing strategy, a gimmick or a check-box exercise. They thereby neglect the beneficiary activity that CSR can impose on the society. Proper assessment, strategy, commitments, implementing plans, evaluation of results and refinement in CSR help businesses to show their values, engage employees, communicate with public about their mode of operation, choices, that helps people and society to understand prospects of sustainable future and thereby engage in partnerships between organizations and civil society (Tennant 2016). This view can be supported by comments made by other researchers who have said that the consumers and media often accept a company possessing social responsibility as trustworthy foundations. The company should perform such responsibility without strategizing and including sales plan in such responsibility that is the company should do it for the welfare of the societies without thinking one owns benefits. Such companies are easily trusted and preferred by the consumers who then purchase products on an ethical prospect. This turn increases the sales of the company even if they did not plan to. This kin d gesture of the organizations also have a very impressive impact on the employees who not only feel proud to serve the nation but also at the same time gets motivated to work better for the consumers smile and thereby this motivation in turn increases the productivity of the organizations (Investopedia, 2016). Corporate social responsibility also helps to develop a constructive relationship between the companies and their customers. Often website representation has a significant impact in the relationship between them. Researchers have shown that rich presentation has a very important impact on the trusting belief whereas the lean presentation influences emotional trust strongly. Thereby the results of the study can help one to portray a well-defined image of a particular company to its customer base and at the same time can act as a guidance to assist the companies (Selamat, Saat and Ali, 2016) Researchers have also noticed that social media also plays a very important role in maintain the CSR. The paper suggested that the social media successfully express four of the indicators among the various important indicators like environment, community relations, diversity, employee relations, human rights, and client comments. These thereby help in developing the ratings and the reputation of the company. It has been also found that if the companies strategize the planning of involving more indicators in their Social responsibility management, they would be able to achieve higher success and thereby one can find social media to b playing a crucial role here (Mcgunagle, Button and Zizka 2016). Many studies have also revealed that the value driven service of the organizations often causes the employees for a much promising commitment towards the organization, as they remain satisfied with the outlook that their organization has towards the society and other communities. CSR has been found to increase employee organization identification, which in return resulted in improvement of the employees moral, commitment, motivation and loyalty. However, the organizations always do not implement CSR out of value-based services. Companies often feel dilemma in implementing CSR for the profit margin that they will provide to the company. This dilemma proves that the company does not want to implement CSR for the well being of the society but rather tend to do it in order to increase their profit margin and also to gain more consumer base and reputation. These are mostly in the hotel industries however, these are not true in every cases (Islam et al. 2016). Other researchers who denote that brand rquity development is another reason gor the implementation of CSR in companies have supported this. CSR also helps in improving the image of a company, which in turn helps in developing the reputation and value of the company. This in turn is found to positively impact the brand equity of the company which in turn increase the profit level by many folds. Proper development of the corporate image through the correct initiatives of CSR helps in proper development of customer perception and this can be achieved by successful ethical, legal and environmental values and commitments. This in turn helps in developing brand equity ultimately helping the company to make more profits (Becker-Olsen, Cudmore and Hill 2006). References: Becker-Olsen, K.L., Cudmore, B.A. and Hill, R.P., 2006. The impact of perceived corporate social responsibility on consumer behavior.Journal of business research,59(1), pp.46-53 Dias, A., Dias, A., Rodrigues, L.L., Rodrigues, L.L., Craig, R. and Craig, R., 2016. Global financial crisis and corporate social responsibility disclosure.Social Responsibility Journal,12(4), pp.654-671. Europa.eu. (2016). European Commission - PRESS RELEASES - Press release - Corporate Social Responsibility: a new definition, a new agenda for action. [online] Available at: https://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-11-730_en.htm [Accessed 12 Dec. 2016]. Investopedia. (2016). Why is social responsibility important to a business?. [online] Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/041015/why-social-responsibility-important-business.asp [Accessed 12 Dec. 2016]. Islam, T., Ahmed, I., Ali, G. and Sadiq, T., 2016. Behavioral and psychological consequences of corporate social responsibility: need of the time.Social Responsibility Journal,12(2). 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