Address the responsibilties that all business share and indicate how they can achieve them. .
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Business for Social Responsibility (BSR)
Helps member companies achieve long-term commercial success by implementing policies that honor high ethical standards and meet their responsibilities.
http://www.bsr.org
Educators for Social Responsibility
Striving to make teaching social responsibility a core practice in education so that young people develop the convictions and skills needed to shape a safe, ...
http://www.esrnational.org
Social responsibility - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But social responsibility is claimed as part of corporate social responsibility and/or stakeholder theory) ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_resp...
Social responsibility is an ethical or ideological theory that an entity whether it is a government, corporation, organization or individual has a responsibility to society. This responsibility can be "negative," in that it is a responsibility to refrain from acting (resistance stance) or it can be "positive," meaning there is a responsibility to act (proactive stance). While primarily associated with business and governmental practices, activist groups and local communities can also be associated with social responsibility, not only business or governmental entities.
There is a large inequality in the means and roles of different entities to fulfill their claimed responsibility. This would imply the different entities have different responsibilities, in so much as states should ensure the civil rights of their citizens, that corporations should respect and encourage the human rights of their employees and that citizens should abide with written laws. But social responsibility can mean more than these examples. Many NGOs accept that their role and the responsibility of their members as citizens is to help improve society by taking a proactive stance in their societal roles. It can also imply that corporations have an implicit obligation to give back to society (such as is claimed as part of corporate social responsibility and/or stakeholder theory).
Social responsibility is voluntary; it is about going above and beyond what is called for by the law(legal responsibility). It involves an idea that it is better to be proactive toward a problem rather than reactive to a problem. Social responsibility means eliminating corrupt, irresponsible or unethical behavior that might bring harm to the community, its people, or the environment before the behavior happens.
In today鈥檚 society a business must maintain ethical principles in order to be successful. (Kaliski, 2001) Businesses can use ethical decision making to strengthen their businesses in three main ways. The first way is to use their ethical decision making to increase productivity. This can be done through programs that employees feel directly enhance their benefits given by the corporation, like better health care or a better pension program. One thing that all companies must keep in mind is that employees are stakeholders in the business. They have a vested interest in what the company does and how it is run. When the company is perceived to feel that their employees are a valuable asset and the employees feel they are being treated and such, productivity increases.
A second way that businesses can use ethical decision making to strengthen their businesses is by making decisions that affect its health as seen to those stakeholders that are outside of the business environment. (Kaliski, 2001) Customers and Suppliers are two examples of such stakeholders. If we were to look at companies like Johnson & Johnson, their strong sense of responsibility to the public is well known. (Hogue, 2001) In particular, take for instance Johnson & Johnson and the Tylenol scare of 1982. When people realized that some bottles of Tylenol contained cyanide they quit buying Tylenol, stocks dropped and Johnson & Johnson lost a lot of money. But they chose to loose even more money and invest in new tamper resistant seals and announce a major recall of their product. There was no 鈥渃ertain amount鈥?for this situation; Johnson & Johnson had to lose money to be socially responsible. But in the long run they gained the trust of their customers. Now when people look at other products, there is a sense of faith and trust in that Johnson & Johnson would not allow a product to harm people just to meet their own bottom line.
A third way that business can use ethical decision making to secure their businesses is by making decisions that allow for government agencies to minimize their involvement with the corporation. (Kaliski, 2001) For instance if a company is proactive and follows the EPA guidelines for admissions on dangerous pollutants and even goes an extra step to get involved in the community and address those concerns that the public might have; they would be less likely to have the EPA investigate them for environmental concerns. 鈥淎 significant element of current thinking about privacy, however, stresses "self-regulation" rather than market or government mechanisms for protecting personal information鈥?(Swire , 1997) Most rules and regulations are formed due to public outcry, if there is not outcry there often will be limited regulation.
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