Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility is an overused term these days and hence it would it be a good idea to go and look at the fundamentals of this phrase. Patricia J Parsons in her book Ethics in Public Relations describes CSR as '' ensuring commercial sucess in ways that honor ethical values and respect people , communities and the environment . Further CSR typically includes issues related to - business ethics , community investment environment , governance , human rights , market place and work place. '' Our guest lecturer Adam Garfunkel defined CSR as a voluntary business effort that is made with an aim of achieving positive social outcomes while benefitting its business objectives. But with the amount of literature on CSR and the hype that surrounds this issue , I think it is not purely a voluntary action.

Why are businesses being socially responsible ? The answer to this question are more than one. The very obvious reasons would be that CSR contributes to corporate image and reputation.Subsequently , a socially responsible reputation is a way of differentiating organizations and providing a competitive advantage. From a stakeholder perspective , CSR works in facilitating a two way flow of information between the organization and stakeholders.
With the kind of benefits a organizations derives from CSR , who would not want to be socially responsible. But the organizations obviously potray it in a different way. This video elucidates how CSR tends to benefit employees.


Business ethics writer Caroll argues that there are four kinds of social responsibility : economic , legal , ethical and philanthropic , demonstrated through the CSR pyramid in the figure below.

This matrix is proposed as an analytical tool for framework to help company managers make sense of their ideas about what the firm should be doing economically , legally , ethically and philanthropically with respect to its defined stake holder groups.

In case of public relations and its functions within an organization , there are ways how ethical PR practise can play a role in the overall socially responsible functioning of organizations. The Public Relations function takes care of - internal relations , client-consumer relations , community relations and media relations . Apart from these , areas of investor relations and goverment relations also serve as opportunities for PR professionals to contribute to an organizations social responsibility programme.