Why Retail Stores Offer Branded Credit Cards?
The retail industry has become closely intertwined with the finance industry over the years. This is the reason that the availability of better financing options often causes the sales of one store to increase in comparison to other stores. Over the years, retail stores have come up with many financial innovations which has helped them […]
An Online Guide to OSHA Safety Regulations, Standards and Checklist
Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an agency of the United States Department of Labor, was created on December 30, 1970. Formed under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, its mission is to ensure safe and healthy conditions at workplace in order to prevent work-related illness, injuries, diseases and wrongful deaths by setting and implementing safety […]
Store Design and Layout – Different Floor Plans and Layouts
Opening a retail store is no joke and requires meticulous planning and detailed knowledge. Location Make sure your store is in a prime location and is easily accessible to the end-users. Do not open a store at a secluded place. Floor Plan The retailer must plan out each and everything well, the location of the […]
Why Technology Can Diminish the Role of HR Function, but, Not Eliminate It Altogether
Why Futurists are Excited and HR Professionals are worried about Technology Of late, there has been much talk about how the latest technologies such as AI or Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, and Automated HR or Human Resources activities can eliminate the need to have dedicated HR staff. The thinking of these experts who proclaim […]
Change Management: Why the First 100 Days Targets are a Myth ?
How often we hear of business leaders and CEO’s who have just taken over proclaim that they would undertake radical change in the first 100 days? How often do we also hear politicians and other personalities promising the moon within the first 100 days? Of course, we don’t get to know how many of these […]
Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR makes for eminent business sense as well when one considers the knock-on effect that social and environmental responsibility brings to the businesses. For instance, corporations exist in a symbiotic relationship with their environments (the term environment refers to all the components of the external environment and not to ecological environment alone) where their exchange with the larger environment determines to a large extent how well they do in their profit seeking endeavours.
When one considers the fact that the RBV or the Resource Based View of the firm is all about how well the firm exists in harmony with its external environment and how this exchange of inputs and outputs with the environment determines the quality of its operations, it can be inferred that socially responsible business practices are indeed in the interest of the firm and the argument against imposing hidden social taxes on the firms by undertaking socially responsible business practices might not hold good in the current business landscape.
Indeed, the world since the days of Friedman has changed so much that socially responsible business practices ought to be the norm rather the exception and the various readings surveyed for this paper do seem to indicate that it is high time for businesses to engage in responsible behaviour.
However, there is a tendency to treat CSR as yet another cost of business and hence be business like about the practice. So, mainstreaming the idea might not bring the desirable effect unless the media, the businesses, and the citizens themselves understand what is at stake and behave accordingly. Paying lip service or corporatizing the idea of CSR might not be the intended outcome of the proponents and the advocacy groups that promote this idea. Rather, a change in the mindset and attitude is what these groups have in mind when they push for socially responsible practices.
It has been mentioned elsewhere that CSR as a concept and as a paradigm ought to be woven into the DNA of the corporations and when the very fabric resonates with the threads of social responsibility; the goals of conscious capitalism and compassionate corporations would be realized.
Hence, a cautionary finger wagging is due for those who believe that since the concept of CSR has been mainstreamed, they can relax in the knowledge that corporations would do the rest. Given the history of profit seeking and mercantilist behaviour where fads and ideas come and go but the very nature of the corporations mutates rather than undergoes a fundamental change, we still have some distance to cover before the goals of the idea of CSR are achieved.
Further, we should not end up in a situation where the imperatives of the 21st century force corporations to change their behaviour. Instead, a voluntary mindset change is something that is better suited given the vast resources that corporations have and which they deploy to resist change and thwart those that push for legislation that aims to do so.
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