Critical review of contemporary companies’ corporate social responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a voluntary, accountable, responsible, self-regulating approach that combines business economic goals to societal, environmental and ethical sustainability. It is organizations an inner sense of good citizenship where surroundings are positively impacted.

Organisation worldwide can adopt frameworks and approaches to CSR and sustainability like the triple bottom line (TBL) which was developed by Elkingtom (1994). TBL is a framework that urges and recommends the commitment and focus on social and environmental concerns in the same or a lesser level from which organisation target and focus profits. TBL has three bottom lines (3Ps) rather than one bottom line (1P) as they should be work towards and make a commitment to profit people, and the planet.

• Profit: The traditional goal of corporate performance which is profit and loss.
• People: The measure of social responsibility an organization has to people and their well being.
• The Planet: the measure of environmental responsibility and consciousness.

Contemporary companies ensure compliance of all existing and future policies and procedures to environmental aspects beside quality, safety and ethics, they align business goals to the environmental and social responsibilities and seeks to be awarded with worldwide recognized certifications. Which is really good and promising and shows a transformation in companies’ direction and taking responsibility of society and environment good being.

Further investigation to some contemporary companies’ corporate social responsibilities and different shareholders/stakeholders corporate governance shows some kind of greenwashing as worldwide recognized certifications are undertaken under contractual obligations or other legal, image or tokenistic requirements. Even when they claim some positive practices like energy and water saving or kind of supports for social or environmental causes, we find with investigations that they are just means of cost leadership strategies or for increasing business profitability. Further analyses of companies’ executives’ strategic decisions analysis shows that there is no environmental and societal assessments are carried for decisions implication which shows significant signs for lack of inner sense of responsibility for real environment and social well-being. It is just for compliance and image purposes. Surely, there are limited societal and environmental gains but there is a greater potential could be achieved once CSR responsibility, accountability, and ethical interaction are embraced and implanted in the corporate governance and culture. This can be enhanced by effective communication, reporting, effective public relations, senior executive’s role modeling, and ethical leadership. Such endeavors may benefit from ascending on Zadak (2004) five stages of organizational learning.

There is much more to gain compared to what was earned if the government regulates organizations voluntary endeavors with legitimate strict review and auditing.

Adoption of Bruno and Karlinear (2002) suggestions of environmental and societal impact mandatory reporting; senior executives extended legitimate liability; supporting right of negatively affected citizens; establishment of environmental and societal regulators; empowering environmental and societal non-governmental organizations; punishments for organizations that make environmental and societal breaches and most importantly, supporting CSR maturity in the minds of natural and artificial citizens (people and organizations) will surely will revolutionize, exploit CSR endeavors. Zadak (2004) four stages of issue maturity and the civil learning tools could be valuable assets for such tremendous effort.

Mohammed Ziyad Al-Zghool, 2019

Resources used:

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-         McWilliams, A., and Siegel, D. S. (2011). Creating and capturing value: Strategic corporate social responsibility, resource-based theory, and sustainable competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 37 (5),

-         Zadek, S. (2004). The path to corporate responsibility, Harvard Business Review, 82(12).

-         Zadek, S. (1998). Balancing performance, ethics, and accountability. Journal of Business Ethics, 17(13).

-         https://www.principalpeople.co.uk/blog/2015/11/what-is-corporate-social-responsibility

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/triple-bottom-line.asp?