supply chain management and business ethics

Running head: CSR AND SUSTAINABILITY MANAGEMNET
CSR and Sustainability Management
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CSR AND SUSTAINABILITY MANAGEMNET
Introduction
The triad theories of business ethics, sustainability and corporate responsibility are major
elements which link environment, people and the company together. It is always criticized as a
failure of management when any one of the element is ignored to earn more profit. The
management of every company must think in a manner that it can caters to needs of every
stakeholders of the company. Society is also one of the stakeholder in which the company
sustains. Business ethics is the honest and right approach of management and how they value the
stakeholders of the companies. It focusses on doing the business and taking business decisions in
such a way that it shows the morality of the managers. Corporate social responsibility are
considered as the business decisions and activities that are helpful in reducing any societal
problem. It involves recognizing a certain issue in the society and accordingly to reduce the
problem to show the society its duty of accountability. Sustainability is another significant
branch of this triad theory because it shows the efforts of the businesses to continue to operate in
the market and how to sustain in the dynamic environment. Ethical behaviour help the
stakeholders to judge whether the business is running in a right or wrong way, good or a bad
way. It helps the managers to formulate the fundamental framework of the company in which it
operates. Even if a company is ethical in its behaviour, it can be said that the company is socially
responsible and sustainable too. However, if a company is socially responsible but doing its
business unethically can attract legal actions which can question its sustainability (Saputra 2018).
Discussion
Different concepts and theories related to CSR

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CSR AND SUSTAINABILITY MANAGEMNET
There are different studies and theories presented by different researchers that whether
the business entity the corporate social responsibility and the corporate sustainability are
converging concepts or both has different concepts and should be used as a standalone concepts.
(Escrig-Olmedo et al. 2014) explained that corporations fulfill the responsibilities towards the
society by fulfilling different objectives such as good corporate citizenship, sustainable
reporting, corporate governance or social objectives such as education, gender equality etc. while
the corporations who adopts sustainability practices in making the operational model, works
effectively to make the company socially, environmentally and ethically responsible. This
sustainability objective gives the company a competitive advantage and which help the company
to sustain in the competitive market and help the company to maintain its goodwill and
reputation in the market.
There must be a proper plan for involving the three bottom line approaches of social,
environmental and economic aspects. This practice will develop a scientific method which can
address the sustainability objective and continue to operate in the market effectively. The
practice of evolving the three concepts into one objective is a complex task for the management
(Amini and Bienstock 2014).
Howard Bowen known as the father of corporate social responsibility explained that
social responsibility is a compulsion and an obligation to conduct the business activities as per
the designed values of the society. The theory was challenged by two schools of thoughts. One
viewpoint was that business entities are part of societies and thus they are ethical responsible for
the social, economic and environmental development (Fernando and Moore 2015). While the
other view point was that the business entities have only one objective that is the profit motive as
per the classical economic theory.

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CSR AND SUSTAINABILITY MANAGEMNET
The sole objective of earning profit can result into less consideration to employees and
society and all the focus of the firm will be on generating huge revenue. The greed of generation
of huge money may divert the company to work unethically and can attract legal action. There
comes the importance of ethical behaviour in running the business. Ethics can be considered as
one of the main pillars which support the CSR of the company. The adherence to social ethics is
becoming more important than following business or professional ethics as per the companies act
(Cowton and Downs 2015).
However, the theory faced criticism from many scholars and economists. In 1996,
Campbell argues that the economic growth and equity increment are based on uses of natural
resources and properties (Campbell 1996). Campbell also states that these conflicts can be
managed and minimized by utilizing resources in a better way. There is always a ‘development
conflict’. This means living standards can be improved only by using the natural resources. This
raises a contradiction to the concept of ‘environmental preservation’ in sustainability approach.
In 2016, Peterson explained that sustainability can be achieved by an integrated approach while
social aspects are extensive and are undistinguishable in the environment (Purvis, Mao and
Robinson 2019).
Causes of the recent development of CSR
The companies are focusing more in the CSR and sustainability because the companies
are facing difficulty to sustain in the market where consumers are becoming more aware each
day. They cannot run their operations without incorporating the social needs in their business
objective. The group of stakeholders which consists of investors too, are becoming more
conscious while investing their money into the business. They assess the company’s performance
not only by seeing their financial statements but also by looking at their reputation and goodwill