The Social Responsability of the Corporations in the Age of Globalization
Name of the Author: Sorin George Toma, Paul Marinescu
Function and Title: Reader, Professor
Institutional Affiliation: University of Bucharest, Faculty of Business and Administration
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Publicat in Colocviul 2007, Sectiunea a IV-a, Relatii publice, reputatie corporativa, responsabilitate sociala corporativa
In the past, corporations focused primarily on growth and profitability. Today’s corporations must convince stakeholders that they have a viable, long-term future. The best-run companies are aware of the importance of three main dimensions of sustainability in the 21st century: social sustainability, environmental sustainability and economic sustainability. That is why incorporating social responsibility into the corporate strategies and policies has become a major concern of the multinational and transnational corporations. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (1999) defined the corporate social responsibility as the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.In the last decades, as businesses have expanded globally, the study of corporate social responsibility has become increasingly important due to the different cultural/country environments in which global businesses operate on a daily basis.
If the corporation is committed to being socially responsible, this can have a direct impact on employee’s behavior. However, the level of corporate commitment to social responsibility is complex and depends on a variety of factors, as corporate culture. Corporate culture affects thoughts, feelings and values, and guides employee’s behavior. Commitment, satisfaction, work productivity and other positive workplace outcomes are significantly higher when employees share the business values of their corporations.
Business values both consciously and unconsciously influence employee’s attitudes. Also, business values define how the corporation and its employees function. These are the main principles upon which everyone in the corporation operates. Business values clarify who employees are, what they stand for and why they do business the way they do. Employees within all business organizations must first perceive the social responsibility of the corporations to be important before their behaviors are likely to reflect greater social responsibility.
Business values are key factors of corporations committed to social responsibility. Recent literature on the growth of the importance of corporate social responsibility emphasizes the
new business imperatives and new social demands. As Lebow and Simon (1997) pointed out, there are five principal requirements for business values:
Business values must affect everything within a corporation, not just one department or region.
Business values must be linked to the overall success of the corporation.
Business values must be controllable by someone or something.
Business values must be measurable.
Business values must be aspirational for all parties involved.
The aim of the paper is to show that corporate social responsibility plays a fundamental role in today’s corporate success. Nestle represents a good example.
The research type is a literature review one combined with a case study.
‘The Nestle Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility as Implemented in Latin America’
is a case study for a new concept of corporate responsibility, called ‘shared value creation’. In this respect, Kramer (2007) looks at corporate social responsibility in terms of creating shared value and says that ”Creating Shared Value is a very different approach to corporate social responsibility (CSR) because is not focused on meeting a set of standard external criteria, or on philanthropy. Rather, we are talking about creating social environmental benefit as a part of making a company competitive over the long term. The idea of winners and losers doesn’t fit this model of CSR: business can help societies progress and all sectors can help business improve and flourish”.
Through ‘shared value creation’, Nestle links its operations and activities to generating long-term value both for its business and for society as a whole, and defines its success in terms of internal financial returns and external social, environmental, and economic results. Latin America is historically important to Nestle because it is home to its first factory established in the developing world since 1921.
The authors consider that corporations should use many creative ways to develop and improve their corporate social responsibility. Therefore, the corporate culture has to be changed. Corporations need not only to reduce negative impacts on society, but more fundamentally, to be part of progress in the age of globalization.
Corporate social responsibility is becoming more and more a key issue for business. It involves corporations consciously orienting their activities towards value creation in three dimensions: people, planet, and profit. At the same time, corporations have to maintain a clear and communicative relationship with the diverse stakeholders on the basis of transparency and dialogue.
The authors consider that corporate social responsibility is about how a corporation manages its business processes to produce an overall positive impact on society. Requiring a new positioning of the corporation with regard to its environment, this vast concept creates a strong link between its financial performance and its record in social and ecological matters. First of all, the implementation of corporate social responsibility is a change process that is difficult to relate to earlier activities and therefore corporations look for other ways to deal with it.
In this respect, the paper argues for a rapid change of the Romanian corporate cultures. Based on their research, the authors assert that, in the last years, only a small part of the Romanian companies has succeeded in fulfilling their corporate social responsibilities.
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