Business, Society and Environment

Running head: BUSINESS, SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT
BUSINESS, SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BUSINESS, SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT
Session 5- Corporate Social Responsibility
Pre-seminar 5
Corporate social responsibility refers to the various functions and activities of
organizations related to socially beneficial initiatives. Corporations are providing much more
importance to socially productive work as this can provide much better interactions between
people and organizations. In the current corporate scenarios CSR is being increasingly referred to
as the sustainability initiatives that can balance the environmental requirements with the
developmental requirements of the organization. CSR also has a significant link with gaining
competitive advantage. In the modern era organizations have repeatedly come under scrutiny and
negative media imaging due to unethical behaviors like misuse of cheap labor and labor rights.
This has made it necessary that the organizations take essential care towards maintaining their
CSR activities. Hence, corporate social responsibilities can also be defined as initiatives that are
important towards maintaining favorable images of organizations towards their essential
stakeholders. The activities of organization that promotes their humanistic and society oriented
values can create a model for efficient management of functions of organizations. It goes on to
promote the more socially productive values of organizations.
Seminar 5
The concept of CSR have evolved greatly over the years. Initially it was merely
concerned with philanthropic activities that were conducted by larger organizations. Slowly CSR
initiatives became essential to the functional effectiveness of organizations. The concept of
Greenwashing has however affected the CSR initiatives. Greenwashing is a term that is used for

2BUSINESS, SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT
the false information that are sometimes provided by organizations, stating that their products are
environmentally more effective than they actually are.
Post-Seminar 5
The thinking that CSR initiatives cannot be affected by any significant issues were
greatly affected after the session. Effective understanding was generated after the sessions about
the various definitions of CSR. It was confirmed that CSR initiatives are growing and being
affected by various forms of mismanagement at the same time. Some of the questions that were
answered were how CSR can be made better in the future and the treatment of CSR as an actual
organizational function. Improving the prospects of CSR was one of the questions that remained
unanswered. I will need to investigate further how CSR could be made a highly distinguished
organizational function rather than a directive principle of organizations. I believe that
organization working in CSR initiatives can be given a benefit of doubt till they are not engaging
in gross misconduct of any kind. Organizations need this in order to derive further motivation for
the work that they engage in.