Our textbook defines social responsibility as “an organization’s obligation to maximize its positive impact on stakeholders and to minimize its negative impact” (Ferrell, Fraedrich, and Ferrell 39). It is a vital aspect of a firm’s survival where a healthy balance between economic performance and environmental performance is found. In addition to maintaining stakeholder trust in a firm, social responsibility encourages sustainable business decisions that ensure the survival and quality of environmental resources for future generations. To an extent, all decisions that a firm is faced with have the potential to impact the natural environment in one way or another.
Sustainability plays a large role in the success or failure of social responsibility. It focuses on regulating the use of natural resources in order to minimize pollution as well as maximize the preservation and regeneration of resources for future generations. If businesses focused on the maximization of gain with no regard to sustainability, immense profits would be very short-lived before the natural environment became overwhelmingly toxified and natural resources were depleted beyond renewal (Ferrell, Fraedrich, and Ferrell 39). This is actually a large-scale and increasingly common problem in the modern world. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, large-scale production became a reality and business growth was almost exponential for decades.
In recent decades, many environmental problems have been brought to mankind’s attention that can be directly linked to the hyperactivity of large-scale production. Atmospheric issues such as air pollution and global warming are just two concerns. Pollution emitted by power plants, factories, and commercial vehicles adds tox...
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... WBSCD: Business Solutions for a Sustainable World. World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 25 Apr 2014. Web. 25 Apr 2014. .
Ferrell, O. C., John Fraedrich, and Linda Ferrell. Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases. 9th ed. Mason: South-Western, 2013. Print.
"ISO 14000 - Environmental management." ISO. International Organization for Standardization. Web. 25 Apr 2014. .
"ISO 26000 - Social responsibility." ISO. International Organization for Standardization. Web. 25 Apr 2014. .
"Our history." BSI Group. The British Standards Institution, 27 Apr 2014. Web. 27 Apr 2014. .
In relation to sustainability, more and more this aspect is becoming very important for a company’s bottom line and for them to differentiate themselves from their competition that fails to establish a sustainability program. In a macro sense, it ethically responsible to establish a sustainability program to identify ways that the firm can make a difference globally and reduce their overall expense and
Protecting the environment has become an important issue in today’s society. There is no longer any doubt that businesses should consider their social responsibility and the impact of their activities on their stakeholders. In addition, firms are beginning to realize that corporate sustainability can prove to be a win win. There are multiple benefits of sustainability linked to costs, revenues, community relations, and more. The decision to strive for sustainability is obvious, but this process is easier said than done. Developing a sustainability strategy is difficult in itself, but the most challenging factor is the actual implementation. Marc J. Esptein, the author of Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environments, and Economic Impacts, provides companies with tactical methods and approaches, as well as real life examples and personal advice in order to assist in helping companies with achieving corporate sustainability.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard-setting body that consists of qualified subject-matter experts from more than 10 countries that attempt to integrate national standards like those from the American National Standards Institute, ISO Technical Committee (TC) 215 Health Informatics, the BSI Group from the United Kingdom, and the Standards Council of Canada, to name a select few (Murphy, 2015).
Sustainability is an “enduring and balanced approach to economic activity, environmental responsibility and societal benefit”- Tata Steel. Sustainability is about meeting the ...
The concept of sustainable development, a relatively new concept has now taken action into the structure of many present day organizations. Identified as “green growth”, the formation of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index provides a platform for managers to understand what it takes to be a sustainable organization. On the subject of sustainable development, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) sponsored by the United Nations published a report defining as,“Development that meets the needs of the current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs and aspirations” (WCED, 1987). Sustainable development is composed of the following two notions. First is the idea of sustainability (to maintain), and secondly, development (to make better) (Bell, 2003). Improvement of our own lives today does not mean at the cost of damaging the quality of
In understanding business ethics it can be problematic in the sense that, this area is vast, often surrounding many concerns such as corporate social responsibility, difficult decision making to name a few. Furthermore, it generally addresses the entire scope of responsibilities and obligations that a company has to each of its stakeholders like consumers, employees, shareholders, suppliers and the society. Business ethics is the study and examination of moral and social responsibility in relation to business practices and decision-making in business (Author Unknown, n.d.).
When we talk of environmental sustainability, we mean a system of life where we are able to maintain our environment without having to compromise with the resources of future generations and yet still manage to meet our own needs. Profitability brings about economic growth and stability to our society. This is why many businesses and government agencies are keen on making, profit and they end up misusing the environment. Profitability and environmental sustainability definitely can co-exist but when we get greedy, earth’s citizens, the economy and the environment would be in great danger. Moreover, at the poor would not be able to survive because their farmlands have been deforested and the rich would not be able to survive because there are no more forests to buy and live off.
So before we go in greater detail on the different perspectives related to social responsibility, one might question the meaning of social responsibility. It is generally agreed that social responsibility is defined as the business obligation to make decisions that benefit societ...
Social responsibility is the part of the framework of an organization or individual which makes up an obligation to act for the benefit of society. There are many different ways act out social responsibility. The social responsibilities of a business can be classified according to the businesses relationships to the general public, customers, employees and investors. The companies that make their product or service with the rooted mindset of benefiting the community and the world around them do this by providing things like scholarship funds, all natural products, biodegradable storage, and or just by treating the consumer as well as the employees as individuals rather than a corporate dollar sign. Businesses may exercise
The expectation that businesses behave responsibly and positively contribute to society all while pursuing their economic goals is one that holds firm through all generations. Stakeholders, both market and nonmarket, expect businesses to be socially responsible. Many companies have responded to this by including this growing expectation as part of their overall business operations. There are companies in existence today whose sole purpose is to socially benefit society alongside businesses who simply combine social benefits with their economic goals as their company mission. These changes in societal expectations and thus company purpose we’ve seen in the business community over time often blurs the line of what it means to be socially responsible, how far a company should go to achieve this and just how much it should cost.
ISO 14001 is the basis for the establishment of EMS, a framework that the company can follow to achieve an effective EMS. In fact, the whole ISO 14000 family is for EMS, which comprises organization, monitoring, evaluation and accounting of the organization’s environmental performance (ISO, 2009). The ISO 14001 is though the most recognized scheme for the EMS and certification, while the rest of the ISO 14000 family is more guidelines for EMS.
Shaw, W. H., & Barry, V. (2011). Moral Issues in Business (Eleventh ed., pp. 230-244).
Without doubt the XXI century has changed our priorities, especially when it comes to the way we do business. Popular sustainable business models, as advertised in the media, have evolved into much more than a moral obligation or an external requirement to generate money. Essentially, are forcing companies to reinvent the systems and approaches with which they generate value and profitability to the company.
Everything that we need for our survival and well being, depends either directly or indirectly on our natural environment. Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony (Environmental Protection Agency, 2005). It is the development to maintain or sustain condition in order to provide improved long-term economic health and stable social and cultural quality system as well as preserve or protect environment (Goldie, 2005). Being sustainable and saving energy has huge economic benefits. Economic benefits of being sustainable for the local community make being sustainable a far better and cheaper choice than most practices we use now.In terms of local businesses, huge amounts of money can be saved by being sustainable and using resources such as energy and water more efficiently. Businesses often lose huge amounts of money each year by using their resources poorly, which could be prevented if businesses made simple changes to improve sustainability (Hannah Barker, 2012). Although it is easier for large companies to implement environmental initiatives to become sustainable, smaller businesses and companies find it more difficult because of costs. But it is shown that being sustainable will save companies and businesses money long term and cover all costs used to set up the sustainable practices. As well as saving money through effective use of resources, being sustainable also gives a positive reputation to the company, attracting customers that way.People living in the community can do simple things like setting their homes thermostat a few degrees lower, which will save the community hugely on energy costs. Members of the community taking shorter showers, cutting do...
Over the past few decades there have been discourses both in favor and against Globalization’s capacity to guarantee a sustainable future. Authors attest societies and businesses’ inability to account for ecological and environmental limits when dealing with economic growth, examples of this are some of the traditional business metrics used by most global companies, and nations’ measure of wealth (GDP); both sides heavily resting on economic factors, fail to account for societal and environmental concerns (Byrnea & Gloverb, 2002). Other researchers point at the intensive use of resources, especially by global corporations; such as the increasing and careless consumption of fossil fuels, water, precious metals, etc. leading to a rise in GHG (Starke, 2002) (United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 2000). Most fervent opponents go as far as to call ‘sustainable development’ an oxymoron (Ayres, 1995).