Responsible of Business

Running Head: RESPONSIBLE OF BUSINESS 1
Responsible of Business
Name:
Institution

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I think what makes up corporate social sustainability (CSR) is a contested subject with
the many definitions developed by different scholars being challenged. My views are that one of
the main reason for challenging the definition of CSR is because this concept overlaps with
others such as sustainable business, environmental sustainability, business ethics, corporate
citizenship, triple-bottom line, and corporate accountability. Companies in the modern era are
facing new challenges in that they are not only accountable to the shareholders but to the larger
stakeholder group involving the community, government, employees, and the society at large.
When I was first introduced to this topic, I remember asking myself the significance CSR
holds to an organization. I have always believed that organizations exist to attain profitability
and CSR concepts were in contrast to this. I must admit that at the time my knowledge on CSR
initiatives and concept was quite limited. This lack of knowledge in this field sparked an interest
in me to further review this concept at large and try to understand how it impacts the operations
of an organization. There is a different schools of thought that have been developed to argue
CSR. These schools of thought have given me some insights on what entails the broad concept of
CSR. For example the neoliberal group view CSR as an adoption model set with voluntary
policies, guidelines, and initiatives that are driven by a corporation (Spolander, et al., 2014). I
understand this school of thought gives a corporation the autonomy to choose whether to engage
in CSR practices or totally disregard them. In one of the articles that I came across in the course
of studying the neoliberal approach, neoliberal Australian journalist Janet Albrechsten argued
that CSR is a flawed and backward step underlying that corporates should be ashamed of
engaging in capitalism and profit-seeking, in search for a moral purpose (Devin & Lane, 2014).
Interestingly, I think, this approach attacks CSR as an unnecessary artificial and unjustifiable
imposition on corporations through additions of responsibility. I believe that corporations should

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be allowed to choose whether to engage or not to engage in CSR practices, however, to attain
competition parity in the contemporary market place CSR activities cannot entirely be ruled out.
Another school of thought is the neo-Keynesian group that has given me a wider
perspective on what CSR entails. This group attributes CSR as an approach that is to be adopted
voluntarily by corporations. According to them, the stakeholders, regulatory bodies and the
government have no mandate to impose a corporation to conduct CSR activities. I came across
the recent European Union ‘green paper’ that describes the CSR activities as a program that can
enable a corporation to integrate social, and environmental concerns in the business objectives on
voluntary (Cho & Patten, 2013). I think this resonates with the views of the neo-Keynesian
group. In my understanding, the neo-Keynesian group proposes that business organizations have
a much wider obligation apart from profit maximization. They are mandated to take
responsibility for the effect caused by their business operations.
The radical political economy proponents establish a far more critical stance in relation to
CSR issues. I noticed that this group take an approach on investigating assumptions on existence
in misuse of powers in local, national and global economies by corporates. I was amazed by the
direct approach of this group that view corporates as having powers which they often wield
ruthlessly for their own good at the expense of the community and the environment. This view I
think does contrast widely both the neo-liberal and neo-Keynesian models (Dawkins & Fraas,
2013). I noticed that probably the oil spill scandal by the Shell Corporation supports the radical
political economy approach. The company disregarded environmental issues and participated in
one of the largest environmental degradation scandals.

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I cannot effectively analyze the CSR issue without first looking into its emergence and
history. From my research and readings, I established that the CSR wave of interest emerged in
the early 1990s as a result of the long-standing debate on the relationship between organizations
and society. CSR can be traced way back to the late 19th century where there was the emergence
of corporate powers and the society was trying to regulate the powers exhibited by the
corporations (Van Aaken, Splitter & Seidl, 2013). The emergence of CSR was characterized by
the response by corporations to prove that government regulation was unnecessary, hence
divulgence into corporate responsibility and philanthropy. Additionally, I established that the
great depression in the year 1930s necessitated the second wave of regulation of post-war labor
governments (Schrempf-Stirling, Palazzo & Phillips, 2016). In the period between the 1960s and
1970s, there was a growing concern on the social and environmental impact by multinational
corporations after the world war and there was an increased need to regulate the activities of
corporations. I discovered that around this period, United States corporations were exploiting the
economies of developing nations through unfair labor practices (Jones, Hillier & Comfort, 2016).
This led to the international community through the United Nations to develop a code of conduct
aimed at curbing the powers of multinational corporations around the world (Jones Christensen,
Mackey & Whetten, 2014). Additionally, numerous multilateral agreements were signed by an
international labor organization, the United Nation, the organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development and other international organizations, all with the aim of limiting the powers of
international organizations (Zhang, Zhu & Ding, 2013). Interestingly, I have established that the
1980 global restructuring necessitated by the rise of neoliberalism led to a dramatic shift in the
operations of the transnational corporations necessitated by the increased competition by the
organizations to attract foreign direct investments (Lanis & Richardson, 2015). The corporations