Social Responsibility and
Sustainable Business Practices
WGU, JJT2
20 June 2014
***PASSED***
Businesses, specifically larger corporations, play a major role in what occurs in society therefore, they are responsible to their stakeholders not only to pursue economic goals but the greater social good as well. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) means that a corporation should act in a way that enhances society and its inhabitants and be held accountable for any of its actions that affect people, their communities, and their environment. (Lawrence, 2010). Social responsibility is becoming the norm so much so that some businesses have incorporated it into their business model. There are three components of the bottom line of social
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Since we already discussed electronics recycling, this consideration is for the waste management of municipal solid waste (MSW) – or everyday items. MSW is the everyday things we use and throw out in the office. This can include items such as packaging, grass clippings, old furniture, bottles, food scraps, and batteries. According to the EPAs annual report on MSW, Americans throw away about 4.3 pounds of waste per person, every day. Preventing waste should be considered as well as recycling and composting.
Recommendations.
Electronics Recycling. Electronic recycling is one consideration the company can do better with. Recycling in general lowers greenhouse gas emissions that are caused by manufacturing items for the first time. Recycling electronics conserves natural resources making cleaner air and water. The valuable resources computers and electronic components carry are metals, plastics, and glass. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), recycling a million laptops would give back enough energy for 3500 American homes’ electricity. A million cell phones would could yield 35,000 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold, and 33 pounds of palladium. Instead of throwing out the old computers and blackberry’s, the company could simply upgrade the hardware or software and then recycle the parts necessary.
Energy Conservation. To conserve energy, it is my recommendation that the company have employees shut
Lawrence, A. T., & Weber, J. (2011). Business and Society: Stakeholders, Ethics, Public Policy (13th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. CSR policy functions as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism that has business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards, and international norms. CSR is a process with the aim to embrace responsibility for the company's actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere who may also be considered stakeholders. CSR is titled to aid an organization's mission as well as a guide to what the company stands for and will uphold to its consumers. Development business ethics is one of the forms of applied ethics that examines
Drawing from these debates, Archie Carroll has developed “the Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility”, one of the most significant concepts of CSR. There are four kinds of social responsibilities that contribute total CSR, he suggested, Economic, Legal, Ethical, and Philanthropic (1991). Therefore being socially responsible does not mean forgetting the fundamental aspect of business, to make profit. The obligation of Law restricts business activities and they are the rules of the game which businesses have to obey. Being ethical is to perform actions that are fair, morally good, and of stakeholders’ interests, even outside the boundary of law. Considering corporate citizenship, philanthropic responsibilities are responses to the rising society’s expectations to business (Carroll, 1991). The notion of discretionary and voluntary distinguishes philanthropic responsibilities to ethical responsibilities. A good CSR firm should “strive to make a profit, obey the law, be ethical, and be a good corporate citizen” (Carroll, 1991, p.43) and without simultaneous fulfillment of the four responsibilities, the business should not be characterized as operating within CSR.
Recycling is a common practice around the world to reduce the overall quantity of resources needed to produce new products. Whether recycling is cost effective compared to the benefits is widely an unknown detail. The cost of energy and labor in combination with undesired effects of pollution associated with recycling is sporadically considered while weighing the benefits.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR, also called corporate responsibility, corporate citizenship, and responsible business) is an idea of considering the interests of society by corporations. Companies take responsibility for the impact of their actions on customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, communities and other stakeholders, as well as the environment. This obligation is seen to extend beyond the statutory obligation to comply with legislation and sees organizations voluntarily taking further steps to improve the quality of life for employees and their families as well as for the local community and society at large1. Nowadays, CSR becomes more and more popular among big companies because it makes them able
There are a variety of devices that have become electronically wasted including VCR’s because of the fact that DVD players replaced them and then DVD players became electronically wasted because Blu-ray players were introduced. Most of these electronics are being recycled improperly around the world. Last year in North America alone more than 85% of electronic devices were not recycled properly. Most of these devices are thrown away when they are still containing materials, which are harmful. Some of these materials include cadmium, lead, beryllium and mercury. Once a large amount of devices are recycled improperly they begin to cause a significant threat to the environment. Besides the fact that they are harmful, companies could also re-use many of the elements in these devices and build a varying of electronic
In recent decades, Corporate Social Responsibility provides a range of factors used for measuring a firm’s contribution to social evolution. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is defined as the business commitment contributing to a sustainable economic development through activities to improve quality of life for workers and the whole community that are both beneficial for business industry and social development (Maren, 2014). Historically, the concept of CSR was first introduced by Howard Bowen in 1950s (Bowen, 1953); later CSR model was successfully applied to several large scale companies such as Nike, Coca – Cola, Prudential Insurance in 1990s (Carroll, 1991). CSR can enhance a company’s reputation and help increase profit in short term and build up organizational culture for a long term (Prutina, 2016). This paper will briefly introduce the four types of CSR and
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to companies taking responsibility for their impact on society. It can bring benefits in terms of risk management, cost savings, access to capital, customer relationships, human resource management, and innovation capacity.
Corporate social responsibility is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. CSR policy functions as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards, and international norms. The goal of CSR is to embrace responsibility for the company 's actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Furthermore, CSR-focused businesses would proactively promote the public interest (PI) by encouraging community growth and development, and voluntarily eliminating practices that harm the public
It is obvious that people have become more conscious of the ethical and social responsibilities of business over recent decades, suggesting that the modern businesspeople should not only consider about profitability but also extent to what they can contribute to the whole society. A quote by Anita Roddick generally demonstrates the spirit of being ethically and socially responsible: “The business of business should not be about money. It should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed.” With the increasing significance of the harmonization of society, the view about whether businesses should be responsible for both ethics and society has been sparked off a heated discussion. From some people’s perspective,
Electronic waste comes in many different forms such as old computers, old cell phones, broken household equipment and machinery, and much more. The main categories for electronic waste or “e-waste” are ICT and telecommunications equipment, office electronics, large and small household appliances, consumer equipment, leisure equipment, lighting, medical equipment, automatic dispensers, monitoring and control instruments, and batteries (ayubmacharia.com).
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is something that affects organizations of all sizes. Unlike many issues CSR is one that does not present solitary solutions. The challenges an organization face ultimately impact what approach they implement to address their CSR concerns. There are those organizations who make customers the center of their decisions and then there are those who focus on fixing the company issues and allowing that to transcend to the impact on customers.
The term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to the responsibilities that modern business organisations have to create a healthy and prosperous society.
Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)—more commonly known as trash or garbage—consists of everyday items we use and then throw away, such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries. This comes from our homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses.
Moreover, there is another limitation that recycling has: lack of motivation for people to recycle. Even though WM made recycling easy, not all people recycle. MassDEF (2002) states that people do not recycle because people are not motivated to recycle. As there is no specific reason to recycle, they do not use their time to recycle. These are the limitations that recycling have. To improve the first solution to disposing wastes, recycling, two things are suggested: motivate people to recycle and send e-wastes to WM. MassDEF (2002) suggests solutions to motivate people to recycle which is letting people "perceive effectiveness of recycling", "concern about the environment", give "social pressure", and provide "financial motive". If people know how recycling helps environment and what environment their child will live, they may have motives to recycle. Also, if WM price the wastes even as small amounts of money, then it may give people a financial motive to encourage people to recycle. If they do so, people still may not recycle, but there will be some people who collect recyclable wastes from roads or some other places to get little money. As people gather more wastes for recycling, significant amount of recyclable wastes that will be landfill will be reduced. In addition, there is a solution of problem of difficulty in recycling electronic