Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility

The million dollar question; is a company responsible to society or are they in fact only focused on making money? In today’s society, I hypothesize that it’s both. Focusing on Professor’s social responsibility strategies of the obstructionist, defensive, accommodative, and proactive mindset, I personally feel that a majority of companies fall into the accommodative region. These companies focus a little on each of the identified types of responsibility of Economic, legal, and ethical. According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are 5,911,663 businesses with less than 500 employees and 20,425 businesses with over 500 employees. From these numbers one can rationally say that since the majority of the businesses fall below the 500 employee mark most of your responsibilities are at the discretion of a tighter knit group of decision makers and the ability to manage all of the financial burdens of being socially responsible are enormous. With larger companies there is an infrastructure of people that are hired directly to ensure that many social responsibilities are met. Granted we have seen several high profile companies (WorldCom and Enron) that have broken numerous laws, but they are still the exception because these companies are so large it became a mainstream event in regulations, news outlets, and economic impacts. The larger companies comprise less than 1 percent of all businesses in the U.S. so one has to question how many of these smaller companies participate in questionable responsibilities?

Since most companies do not have the economic means to hire gobs of people to execute social responsibilities it again falls on the discretion of individuals. I can only hope that there are more good people then bad and that we can achieve the accommodative approach to responsibilities. These responsibilities should at a minimum include 1st, always working with in the legal confines of their business practice, 2nd, Make an economic impact for both the business, the employees, and the economy, and 3rd, work in the highest ethical standards by setting the example from top down.

Breaking these 3 items down farther I would like to say that legally, companies have an obligation to meet the standards set forth from both the governments and the societies they represent. The implications of breaking these rules have numerous implications that economically speaking far outweighs the thought of breaking rules when caught. I refer back to my second writing assignment where I discussed the account rep who under guidance from his company thought he was doing the right thing when in fact he was participating in a legally compromising situation. The implications for his company would not in fact pass the front page/smell test. Since this company broke the rules and potentially polluted the ocean, they will face stiff fines, scrutiny from the society, and a legal