preview

corporate social responsibility motivations and country factors

Best Essays

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an increasingly important issue for all businesses around the world. CSR covers economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of firms. Explain the factors that may motivate an MNE to adopt CSR in its international business strategy and operations. How might the country context influence the types of CSR initiatives undertaken? Support your answer with real world examples or cases.

While corporate social responsibility (CSR) has existed for a long time, it has garnered attention only in the last two decades as an important aspect of doing business. Academic research on CSR has evolved over the years, indicating a change in how CSR is viewed as time goes by. In the earlier years of …show more content…

It could be in less obvious means, such as a clothing company not ultilising sweat shops or child labour in producing its goods. When consumers buy products that bear such attributes, they believe they are “indirectly supporting a cause and rewarding firms that devote resources to CSR” (McWilliams and Siegel 2001, p. 119). Consumers are able to identify better with a company that engages in CSR activities and feel a stronger connection or attachment to such firms.
Consumer oriented CSR also involve intangible attributes, such as reputation. Having a strong reputation has been linked to attracting more customers, retaining and motivating employees, gaining favour with analysts and the media amongst many more reasons (Bhattacharya and Sen 2004). CSR has come to matter in building a reputation for corporations. The Reputation Institute ranks the world’s most reputable companies based on the RepTrak® system. RepTrak® analyses seven dimensions of corporate reputation: Citizenship, Innovation, Governance, Workplace, Leadership, Products/Services and Financial Performance (Reputation Institute 2013). Of which, three of these dimensions (citizenship, governance and workplace) fall into the CSR category, and analysis has shown that “42% of how people feel about a firm is based on their perceptions of the a firm’s CSR practices” (Smith 2012, para. 6). The Body Shop, Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s

Get Access