Corporate Social Responsibility: A Review

This assignment delves into the multifaceted topic of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It examines various definitions and perspectives on CSR, exploring its motivations, drivers, and key elements. The assignment also analyzes the benefits and challenges associated with implementing CSR initiatives, considering both internal organizational impacts and external societal effects. Furthermore, it discusses the role of stakeholders in shaping and influencing CSR practices, highlighting current trends and future directions in the field.

Running head: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Executive summary:
Corporate social responsibility has been found to be one of the most important aspects that
should be possessed by every organization to maintain sustainability. Every organization has to
tackle the social and environmental concerns by providing effective solutions and initiatives to
bring out changes. Different organizations had already established several programs that are
explained in the report.

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Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Reputation Institute (RI):.................................................................................................................3
Lego:................................................................................................................................................4
Microsoft:........................................................................................................................................4
Google:............................................................................................................................................5
Walt Disney:....................................................................................................................................6
BMW Group:...................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................8
References:......................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction:
Corporate social responsibility can be defined as a particular type of business approach
that helps in contributing to the different sustainable developments. This is mainly done by
delivering economic, environmental as well as social benefits for all stakeholders who are
associated with the business. Researchers are of the opinion that it is a broad concept that helps
in addressing a wide number of topics like health and safety, corporate governance,
environmental effects, human rights, contribution to that of the different economic department
and working conditions. A number of benefits remain associated with the organizations that
develop good corporate social responsibilities. These are the development of better recognition
of the band, easier forms of access to the capital, positive formation of business reputation,
growth of the organization and increased sales and loyalty of customers. It also helps in making
savings of operations costs, betterment of financial performance and development of greater
ability to retain staff and attract talent. This report will help to show how five important
companies had garnered topmost positions globally by fulfilling their corporate social
responsibility successfully.
Reputation Institute (RI):
Reputation Institute (RI) is a Boston-based reputation-management consulting firm. It has
conducted an annual study by mainly tracking down the social responsibility reputations of about
170000 companies in 15 countries. They have analyzed the ratings by mainly zeroing in on the
perceptions of the consumers about the company governance, its positive influence on the

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society as well as the treatment of the different employees. They have analyzed so with the
proprietary RepTrak Pulse system (Strauss 2018).
Lego:
In the year, 2017 Lego has emerged as the topmost company showing the best CSR with
RepTrak points of 74.4. The company has jumped from its fifth position in the year of 2016 to
that to first position in the year 2017. RI has found out the LEGO not only behave ethically but
also protects the environment and also supports different worthy causes. It is a Danish toy
company. It had taken important steps like ‘Building the Change’ as well as the Sustainable
Material center initiatives. It has also engaged successfully into a partnership with that of the
World Wide Fund for developing the condition of the poor and underprivileged (Isaksson,
Kiessling & Harvey, 2014). Lego has spent 1 billion Danish Krone (about $150 million) for the
development of sustainable materials. They had planned to use them for the packing of different
materials and to make high quality plastic toys. Moreover, it is seen that the organization had
hired for about 100 engineers with an aim to develop various alternatives to petroleum-based
materials (Berlan, 2016). It has also taken initiatives for reduction of the carbon footprint. They
have invested in wind farms so that they can help in offsetting the energy used in factories and
for achieving its goals of utilizing 100 % renewable energy by the year of 2020.
Microsoft:
Microsoft is one of the Seattle based technology firm and has garnered the second
position from the last year. It has scored about 74.1 according to the RepTrak CSR scoreboard.
The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella is considered one of the most important proponents of the
social as well as the environmental responsibility. The organization has committed in

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enhancement of education as a highly relevant global human issue. The organization had been
successful in taking responsible actions for safeguarding the future of the planet with the help of
different interesting initiatives. They had developed Artificial intelligence in ways, which helps
in amplifying human ingenuity, and help in developing sustainability across the globe. With the
help of development of AI, they had created access for different organizations and individuals in
getting access to cloud and computing resource for the development of efficient environmental
solutions (Wang et al., 2016). They had also helped in education and innovations. ‘Project
premonition’ is an interesting project that had garnered huge appreciation from stakeholders.
75% of the emerging infectious diseases are seen to originate form animals. Monitoring and
gathering samples are often considered labor intensive and time consuming by scientist. Hence,
the project would be using mosquitoes as tools for the collection of data from animals in the
environments (Jannsen, Sen & Bhattacharya, 2015). This project mainly aims in detecting as
well as tracking pathogens more accurately so that prevention of their outbreaks can be done
among humans. Another interesting initiative that has taken by them is called the FarmBeats.
This project is seen to utilize advanced technology, power of machine learning and Cloud and
even the power of the existing connectivity infrastructure to help in data driven farming. This
helps the farmers to get interpretable insights for developing agricultural yield, reduction of
environmental impact and lowering of the overall cost of the farming (Westermann et al., 2015).
Google:
The next organization, which had attained the third rank according to the report of RI, is
Google. It has achieved a CSR score of 73.9 and has fallen from the first place to third place. It
has taken commendable initiatives in the domain of energy consumption. Google takes
responsibility in the purchasing or in the production of 24% renewable energy. It already has

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11% renewable electricity on the board and thereby totals to the renewable energy of 35%. The
rest of the 65% of energy that is non-renewable is entirely neutralized by carbon-offset projects.
Already, 4 million square feet of Google buildings had achieved green certification status. This
status had been provided by LEED. In case of water consumption, the organization has reduced
potable liters of water utilized by each employee by 30% at the Bay Area headquarters. Six
branches of operating data centers of organization had been seen to achieve 100% landfill
diversion and one of these had also achieved ‘Zero Waste to Landfill’ (Pai et al., 2015). The
company had been seen to be carbon neutral form the year of 2007. Moreover it’s another
initiative called the ‘Commuting Sustainably’ has dedicated in keeping about 5700 cars out of
roads. Not only that, its shuttle program as well as the different electric vehicle charging stations
are found noteworthy as it is equivalent to the use of 87 million vehicle miles annually.
Moreover, it is also responsible for developing its operations on cloud (Tai & Chuang, 2014).
This has advantages, as this platform is carbon neutral with different types of positive
environmental implications.
Walt Disney:
This company has been successful in achieving the rank of four in the domain of
corporate social responsibility by getting a RepTrak score of 73.5 points. It has been dropped
from third place to fourth place by a margin of 102 points. It has been the leader of CSR in the
year 2009 and had been continuing to so since then. However, the raising value and expectations
of CSR had resulted in dropping from position one to four. Volunteerism is one of their
initiatives where they encourage over one million people in USA to commit and provide service
in their communities (Hirosee, Lee & Matsumara, 2017). They do so by offering free tickets to
the million people for providing volunteering service from an organization that they choose.

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Moreover, they have tried to focus on environmental education to their consumers by sharing
compelling stories and even immersing audiences in the natural world to make them more aware.
They have produced three important Disney Nature films like Earth, Oceans, and African Cats.
Moreover, they have also planted more than 3 million trees in the threatened Atlantic forest in
Brazil and had protected for about 40000 acres of coral reefs in the region of the Bahamas. They
have also conserved for about 5000 acres of Savanna Wildlife corridors in Africa. Disney
Worldwide Conservation Fund has taken many other initiatives. It was established in the year
1995 and since then it has helped global as well as local nonprofit organizations who are working
to protect wildlife and ecosystems making a positive impact on the community (Rainey et al.,
2015). From that time, until today, it has been seen to support over $20 million in various types
of projects in over 112 countries.
BMW Group:
It has garnered the fifth position among the different organization of various nations in
the domain of corporate social responsibility. It has a RepTrak Score of 71.5 points. It has
dropped from its position from fourth place to that of the fifth place by a margin of 2.4 points.
BMW has been seen to provide importance in three aspects which are clear self positioning,
sustainable operation model and as well as innovation and creation. This organization has been
seen to effectively promote long term and active participation of various stakeholders so that
proper addressing of the social issues can be made and shared value can be created. It has placed
importance on three important principles (Oberseder et al., 2014). These are all-stakeholder
engagement, addressing different social issues and long-term commitment. BMW Children’s
Traffic Safety Education (CTSE) is one an interesting initiative that is taken by the organization.
This project mainly helps in targeting the learning of road safety by children in China. It mainly

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helps in improving the children as well as the adults’ road safety awareness. This is done by
‘fixed experiential center adventures’, ‘simulation-based learning’, ‘different media’ as well as
interactive teaching methods lime combined playing and learning. Another is the BMW Joy
home that is actually established by the organization as an exclusive stakeholder engagement
program. This initiative provides help to left behind children in the different underdeveloped
areas of China (Schimtz & Schrader, 2015). They are using the Joyful Sorts model that is
integrating extensive participation, resource sharing, and extensive participation and integrating
curriculum innovation to provide equal development opportunities for the left behind children in
the nation.
Conclusion:
The different organization discussed in the report has been seen to provide considerable
support in saving the environment and helping in sustainable development of the nations. They
had been successful in integrating social as well as environmental concerns in their different
business ventures, operations and interactions with the stakeholders. Lego, Microsoft, Google,
Walt Disney as well as BMW had contributed their utmost in developing sustainability and had
successfully achieved a proper balance between economic, social as well as environmental
imperatives. Other organizations would set them as examples and try to develop strategic
business management concept, charity, sponsorships and philanthropy ensuring corporate social
responsibility.

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References:
Berlan, A. (2016). Whose business is it anyway: Children and corporate social responsibility in
the international business agenda. Children & Society, 30(2), 159-168.
Hirose, K., Lee, S. H., & Matsumura, T. (2017). Environmental corporate social responsibility:
A note on the first-mover advantage under price competition. Economics Bulletin, 37(1),
214-221.
Isaksson, I., Kiessling, T., & Harvey, M. (2014). Corporate social responsibility: Why
bother?. Organizational Dynamics, 43(1), 64-72.
Janssen, C., Sen, S., & Bhattacharya, C. B. (2015). Corporate crises in the age of corporate social
responsibility. Business Horizons, 58(2), 183-192.
Öberseder, M., Schlegelmilch, B. B., Murphy, P. E., & Gruber, V. (2014). Consumers’
perceptions of corporate social responsibility: Scale development and validation. Journal
of Business Ethics, 124(1), 101-115.
Pai, D. C., Lai, C. S., Chiu, C. J., & Yang, C. F. (2015). Corporate social responsibility and
brand advocacy in business-to-business market: The mediated moderating effect of
attribution. Journal of Business Ethics, 126(4), 685-696.

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Rainey, H. J., Pollard, E. H., Dutson, G., Ekstrom, J. M., Livingstone, S. R., Temple, H. J., &
Pilgrim, J. D. (2015). A review of corporate goals of No Net Loss and Net Positive
Impact on biodiversity. Oryx, 49(2), 232-238.
Schmitz, J., & Schrader, J. (2015). Corporate social responsibility: A microeconomic review of
the literature. Journal of Economic Surveys, 29(1), 27-45.
Strauss, K. (2018). Top 10 companies Showing CSR - Forbes Welcome. [online] Forbes.com.
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2017/09/13/the-10-companies-
with-the-best-csr-reputations-in-2017/#aaa086c546bf [Accessed 2 Feb. 2018].
Tai, F. M., & Chuang, S. H. (2014). Corporate social responsibility. Ibusiness, 6(03), 117.
Wang, H., Tong, L., Takeuchi, R., & George, G. (2016). Corporate social responsibility: An
overview and new research directions thematic issue on corporate social
responsibility. Academy of Management Journal, 59(2), 534-544.
Westermann-Behaylo, M. K., Rehbein, K., & Fort, T. (2015). Enhancing the concept of
corporate diplomacy: Encompassing political corporate social responsibility, international
relations, and peace through commerce. The Academy of Management
Perspectives, 29(4), 387-404.