Businessmen Case

Nowadays, businessmen could no longer consider only about their own profits, but have to take account of corporate initiatives to become the most virtuous companies. According to the widely cited book “Business and Society: Environment and Responsibility “, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is illustrated as "the managerial obligation to take action to protect and improve both the welfare of society as a whole and the interest of organizations" (Davis and Blomstrom 1975, p.6) While CSR is promoted popularly over recent years, it is heightened that business attention towards CSR is not totally being voluntarily. As there is apparent conflict between virtue corporate behavior and economic profit maximization, the advantage of CSR approach remains undetermined. It is difficult to quantify the benefit of CSR since you can’t only look narrow upon those financial operational figures, like product sales revenue, productivity, etc., but as well the sustainable development of both company and society in the long run. This essay will examine the positive effects of Corporate Social Responsibility on its implication of brand and reputation, human resources and cost advantage. It is suggested with statistics showing outstanding financial performance and internal business operation. To tackle challenges from the competitive market, the only way is to root the conceptualization of CSR broadly into the corporation and reach out a common goal cohesively throughout the whole value chain with a bottom-to-up approach.

One of the significant and uttermost benefits is that CSR can increase the value of firm by creating a positive brand image, which ultimately boosts the sales revenue up in market and expands stakeholder’s wealth. Customer is being regarded as the most essential aspect in all the business sectors. By conducting ethical social behavior, corporation can easily gain mutual trust from clients and further develops its brand loyalty with stable income from a group of focused customers. Using the measure of economic earnings, driving consumer demand and brand strength, it is suggested that there is a strong linkage between CSR engagement and brand value (Interbrand, 2008). Furthermore, the brand value is testified to bring profitable on business investment as Lantos (2001) points out a “win-win situation” for the CSR practice. In addition, exerting moral practices of CSR could be able to satisfy certain expectations of various stakeholders including those investors and customers, for instance, ethical issues, environmental damages, corporate commitment to society, employee treatment, etc. According to Berrone et al. (2007), meeting those criteria of stakeholders upon CSR would enhance financial performance deliberately as it is prone to promote its brand image and reputation as an intangible asset. One of the successful companies is Body Shop, which has evolved from a small shop in England since 1976 to nowadays international