Corporate And Social Responsibility

Corporate And Social Responsibility

In recent years, Corporate and Social Responsibility has become an ever increasing concern and source of community debate. It is now socially accepted that corporations have some ongoing responsibility, though sometimes ignored, to set a good example, make decisions based on social good and on ensuring positive environmental practices.

The two articles reviewed both focus on this corporate responsibility but they have very different approaches and draw very different conclusions. John Darley's article "How Organisations Socialize Individuals into Evildoing" summarises some of the factors and forces involved in creating socially negative corporate scenarios and then goes on to detail how individuals are heavily pressured by internal corporate culture, management structures and corporate agendas and can then go on to propagate the same. This article examines the motivating factors and draws some alarming and negative conclusions, implying that this corporate mentality of potential social abuse is systemic to capitalism.

In contrast, David Birch's article "Social, economic and environmental capital" mentions some of the basic aspects for what is required to achieve positive corporate citizenship, looks at some of the obstacles involved and then suggests changing how we view and perceive corporations from previous models, in an effort to better understand how to achieve these changes.

Darley suggests that all corporations "have the potential to drift into harm-doing" (p.221) because the driving motivation of all corporations is "on corporate profitability" (p.221) citing numerous cases of when these motivations resulted in disastrous effects. These examples and illustrations are eff...

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... or a pessimist like Darley, I think the majority of us have come to appreciate that Corporate and Social Responsibility is not only desirable but necessary. The birth of corporate change has begun, perhaps slowly and painfully at first, but with increasing social pressure it will continue to grow and hopefully result in a better economic, social and corporate environment for all. D. Birch (2002). Social, Economic and Environmental Capital. Corporate Citizenship in a New Economy. Deakin University, Melbourne

J.M. Darley (2005). How Organizations Socialize Individuals into Evildoing