Corporate Social Responsibility: A Case Study of Microsoft

Running head: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Review of literature regarding corporate social responsibility:.......................................................3
Derivation of concept on Corporate Social Responsibility:........................................................3
CSR driven by the social obligation............................................................................................3
CSR responsibilities driven by the stakeholder relation:.............................................................4
Moral Perspective Approach:......................................................................................................5
Implementation of the CSR driven by Strategy:..........................................................................5
Implementation of CSR driven by the leadership:......................................................................6
Pattern of performing the CSR by the companies:......................................................................6
Case Study: Microsoft- Delivering the quality software while maintaining the CSR practice.......7
Discussion and conclusion.............................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction
Corporate Social Responsibility can be defined as the philanthropic act by the business
organizations in order to maintain the social and environmental sustainability. It can also be
defined as CSR or corporate citizenship. In order to maintain the corporate social responsibility
the organization has to maintain certain parameters. It has been seen that the main challenge for
the organizations is to expand and develop the business along with maintaining the practice of
corporate social responsibility.
In most of the cases, the business organizations and the individuals are following the
Friedman’s theory regarding corporate social responsibility. However, in today’s competitive
market, focusing only on the profit is not a suitable way (Al Jarah and Emeagwali 2017). Every
business organizations ahs to be concerned regarding the practice of the corporate social
responsibility or corporate citizenship as there are many win-win situations for the organizations
involved in this practice.
In this discussion the chosen organization to understand the structure of the corporate
social responsibility is Microsoft. The reason for choosing the Microsoft as the organization is
that it is regarded as one of the IT giants at present industry. Apart from that this organization
has gained its name for maintain sustainability and providing proper infrastructure for the
development. There are certain issues and challenges regarding the corporate social
responsibilities (Al Jarah and Emeagwali 2017). The main objective of this discussion is to
evaluate the way Microsoft has practices CSR and its impact on the environment and society
(Hirose, Lee and Matsumura 2017). Apart from that this discussion also involves the challenges
faced by this organization while implementation CSR. This evaluation would be helpful as the

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challenges faced by this IT giants can be similar to the problems and challenges faced by the
other organizations. The identifications and the mitigation technique can be helpful for the other
organizations.
Review of literature regarding corporate social responsibility:
Derivation of concept on Corporate Social Responsibility:
There are various theories regarding the corporate social responsibilities. In this context,
the theories invented by Friedman and Russell can be mentioned. In both theories the
involvement of the elements and the way of working in the CSR has been described in a different
way. According to the Friedman the main objective of CSR is to engage the available resources
in a proper way and increase the margin of the profit for a particular business. Apart from that it
also supports the elimination of the fraud while doing the business.
On the other hand, according to the Russell, every duty is involved with the right and it
owns some of the responsibilities. In this case, the business organizations have some right of
doing the business and those rights is involved with a duty which is known as corporate social
responsibility.
CSR driven by the social obligation:
CSR can be vied from the different perspectives. According to the Wang et al. (2016), the
corporate social responsibility has been seen as the act driven by the social obligations. In this
case, the study has mentioned the pyramid of the CSR which has four stages. The development
of the CSR can be developed through these four stages. These four stages are economic, legal,
ethical and philanthropic obligations. These four stages however are not mutually exclusive.