CSR and Sustainability Management

CSR and Sustainability Management
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With the changing in time, all the stakeholders of the organization are becoming more sensible
and aware of other factors. This is the 21st century and a business cannot survive focusing on
profit factor only. Many businesses are developing their focus on other factors in addition to
mere profits. Here to mention that no entity work in isolation and the same affect and get
affected by many of the factors/dimensions of the business environment. For every business,
stakeholders are important people and therefore the same is required to be responsible towards
them (Cooper, 2017). Now the issue is to check that what responsible organization/management
is. In order to answer this query, this is to state that a responsible organization is the one, which
takes the accountability of its actions and encourages affirmative impact on customers, suppliers,
environment, employees, and other stakeholders by its activities (Theheartofthecity.com, 2019).
Many of the people termed responsible management practices as corporate social responsibility,
sustainability, and/or business ethics. All these terms seem to be similar but have certain
differences in mutual. The presented essay is focused on the three terms and their relationship in
mutual. All the three mentioned terms will be discussed in the essay in detail. In addition to this,
the practices under these terms will also be mentioned. At last, the focus will be made on the fact
that how all these three practices can be combined with each other in order to make business
responsible.
Starting from the very basic and core theory of responsible management named corporate social
responsibility; this is to state that the same is defined as a managerial concept in which
organizations consider the environmental and social concern in their business practices (Lister,
2011). This is an emerging concept where organizations do think of other factors in addition to
economic benefits considering the interest of all their stakeholders. It is a wide subject, which
includes corporate governance, healthy contribution to the economic environment, human rights

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and many other topics (Lexicon.ft.com, 2019). It is a concept, which frequently overlaps over
other similar approaches such as corporate responsibility, sustainability, and business ethics. As
mentioned earlier this concept demands the consideration of all the related stakeholders in
business operations, this is also required to know that who these stakeholders are. This is to state
that shareholders are the primary stakeholder of every organization (Williams, 2014). These
people invest in a business and expect a certain value in return. They are owners of the business
and in order to satisfy their interest, an entity is required to earn and divert the profits among
them. In addition to the shareholders, employees are also an important stakeholder of the
organization (Carroll, Brown and Buchholtz, 2017). Employees are the people responsible for
the ultimate action/performance. In order to be responsible, an organization is required to
consider the interest of employees. Further customers, suppliers, government, environment, and
society are other stakeholders (Harrison and John, 2009). All of them plays an important role and
has significance in the affairs of an organization and vice versa. Many of the practices are there
which comes under the category of corporate social responsibility. From the perspective of a
business, CSR focus on new opportunities in order to respond to the environmental and social
demands of the market. In the present era, every organization aims at the long term and
sustainable growth. In addition to this, the behavior of the consumer is also changing with the
time, they are being involved in the ethical and cultural audit of business procedures. The
practice of CSR leads many benefits to a business. Businesses that adopt CSR practices get some
advantages in comparison to other businesses. One needs to understand that this is a competitive
economy and in order to be successful in the long term, a business needs to be responsible.
Business, which adopt CSR practices get more customer. The buy-ability and sell of their
products and services get high. Goodwill is another benefit that a firm can achieve by adopting

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CSR practices (Beal, 2013). CSR plays a significant role in developing the trust of customers and
the morale of employees.
Further, the theories of CSR are also important to discuss in order to understand this concept in
detail. Various scholars have given different theories on this topic. One of the important theories
is shareholder theory that focuses on shareholders and says that an organization should only
consider the interest of shareholders in its workings (Hunsaker, 2018). Another theory is
stakeholder theory according to which an organization is required to think of interest of all
stakeholders. Business ethics theory of CSR emphasis that the ultimate responsibility of an
organization is towards society (Rahul, 2012). In such a manner, corporate social responsibility
is a concept that pushes an organization to be more responsible.
Another theory of responsible enterprise is sustainability. This concept works on the same belief
that in order to be successful in the long term an organization is required to be sustainable. The
concept says that businesses should carry economic activities without bringing any harm to
natural resources (Sustain.ucla.edu/about-us, 2019). In the practices of sustainability, the focus of
the management remains on three dimensions. It means the activities of an organization should
bring a positive impact on the economy, society, and environment. Such kind of development is
termed as sustainable development. It is an important theory of responsible enterprise as it shows
how much an organization thinks of other factors apart from profits. An organization termed as
responsible one when the same appropriately use natural resources, adopt sensible practices, and
consider all the three dimensions in its business activity namely social, economic, and
environmental. It is therefore clear that sustainability is not about the environment only but also
includes other factors too. In addition to sustainable use of the environment, an organization
should also use human capital and economic products in a sustainable manner. According to the