Corporate social responsibility
Besides being a buzz word in management studies parlance, corporate social responsibility is a very important aspect of corporate reality. There is some amount of vagueness associated with CSR and so this short paper is aimed at putting the concept within a modern post WTO perspective. While there is no single, commonly accepted definition of Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR, it generally refers to business decision-making linked to ethical values, compliance with legal requirements, and respect for people, communities, and the environment. For purposes of argument one could easily follow the US-UK tradition according to which CSR is defined as operating a business in a manner that meets or exceeds the ethical, legal, commercial and public expectations that society has of business. Leadership companies increasingly see CSR as more than a collection of discrete practices or occasional gestures, or initiatives motivated by marketing, public relations or other business benefits. Rather, it is viewed as a comprehensive set of policies, practices and programs that are integrated throughout business operations, and decision-making processes that are supported and rewarded by top management. It thus forms a part of the overall Strategic HR intervention on the one hand and Strategic Business initiatives on the other. Business Groups that have been practising it in India of almost a century now can be counted on fingertips. In a manner of speaking CSR is the public ethical face of the corporation and establishes the link between the business organisation and civil society which are mutually correlated.
Based on this author's research there is little doubt, however, that in the forthcoming years when market competition will drive capital towards getting centralised and concentrated the brand of a corporate entity will be known by its standards of ethics and governance. Ethics and governance are the pillars on which modern society...