Social Responsibility Perspectives

1
Social Responsibility Perspectives

• Classical View social obligation and
  organizations as profit maximizers
• Socioeconomic View organizations as protectors
  of societys welfare
• Enlightened Self-Interest social
  responsiveness, organizations align themselves
  with community
• Stewardship social responsibility, and
  organizations as philanthropists

2
Issues Involving CSR

• Product Safety
• Dow Corning implants, Phillip Morris cigarettes
• Environmental Pollution
• Toxic releases, resource depletion
• Employee Welfare
• Health and safety, work and family issues
• Community Relations
• Philanthropy, employee volunteerism

3
Approaches to Being Socially Responsible

• Economic Responsibility produce goods and
  services, maximize profit
• Legal Responsibility obey official and
  unofficial rules/regulations/contracts
• Ethical Responsibility preserve equity and
  fairness, respect rights
• Discretionary Responsibility actively make
  social contributions

4
Levels of Moral Development

• Preconventional punishments and consequences
• Conventional expectations of external
  constituencies
• Principled personal standards of conduct

5
Arguments for Social Responsibility

• Meet public expectations
• Maximize long-run profits
• Meet ethical obligations
• Enhance public reputation
• Discourage further govt regulation
• Balancing responsibility and power
• Meet various stakeholder interests
• Possess the resources to contribute
• Superiority of prevention over cures

6
Arguments Against Social Responsibility

• Violation of profit maximization
• Dilution of purpose
• Covering costs
• Excess power
• Lack of skills to address social issues
• Lack of social accountability
• Lack of broad public support

7
Organizational Action Strategies

• Obstructive deny responsibility and create
  obstacles
• Defensive admit error but defend original
  position
• Accommodative follow legal requirements and
  public opinion
• Proactive voluntarily take the lead in social
  reform

8
Institutionalizing Ethical Behavior

• Develop employee awareness of ethics in decision
  making
• Ethics training(case studies, guidelines,
  frameworks)
• Establish an ethical organizational culture
• employee involvement
• whistle-blowing procedures
• tangible and realistic work goals
• ethical decision making in performance ratings
• a new CEO
• Extend ethics training toward long-term strategy

9
Take Home Points

• Different approaches to social responsibility
• Arguments for and against social responsibility
• Different organizational strategies regarding
  social responsibility
• Actions that can improve ethical behavior in
  organizations