Corporate Social Responsibility Project: AECOM and Sustainability

This project presents an analysis of AECOM's corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, focusing on its commitment to sustainability. The project begins with an overview of CSR, defining its various dimensions including environmental, social, economic, stakeholder, and ethical responsibilities. It then transitions to a detailed examination of AECOM's specific CSR practices, highlighting its environment-friendly projects, community engagement efforts, and dedication to ethical business conduct. AECOM's projects, such as the Golden 1 center, are discussed in terms of their environmental impact and resource conservation efforts. The company's collaborations with organizations like USAID and its focus on building resilient cities are also examined. Furthermore, the project explores AECOM's internal practices, including its treatment of employees and stakeholders, its commitment to diversity, and its adherence to CSR principles like creativity, scalability, and responsiveness. The analysis concludes with suggestions for how AECOM can further enhance its CSR efforts, such as implementing water conservation plans and supporting renewable energy projects. The project is supported by references to scholarly articles and publications that provide a broader understanding of CSR.

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Corporate Social Responsibility
Scholars have presented several definitions of corporate social responsibility. Yet there remains a
gap about how corporate social responsibility is to be implemented. Organizations define social
responsibilities in different ways. However, corporate social responsibility deals with returning
to a society where the organizations operate. The return can be generated in several ways.
Reducing emissions of harmful gases, serving society, saving the green earth are some examples
of corporate social responsibility practices. Corporate social responsibility is all about adhering
to the ethical values and serving society by ensuring an optimal level of output and distribution
of wealth to the stakeholders of the company. Companies now designate some amount out of the
profits for a specific caus4 that helps humanity (Esty, 2006).
The concept of the corporate social responsibility began in the 1920s, however, the concept
couldn’t gain importance due to the depression in the economy and the outburst of the world
war, the second. The concept couldn’t gain popularity as businesses were suffering during the
dispersion period and did not have enough profits to invest in such activities (Frederick, 2006).
The concept remains unpopular and buried till the 1950s .In 1951, the chairman of the oil
company in New Jersey talked about corporate social responsibility and its importance. He
mentioned that organization must make sure that their activities and productions practices create
a balance and a harmony among the society, employees, stakeholders, and the public. Serving the
public and the society where an organization operates is as important as earning profits (Davis,
2005).
Howard Bowen made a literary contribution to highlighting the importance of corporate social
responsibility. He mentioned in his publication that, social responsibility is the utmost
responsibility of every businesses man. The actions, strategies, production practices and goals of

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a company must align the objectives of the business and the societal needs (Freeman, 2009). This
means that every organization must design their practices and the way of conducting their
businesses in a way that societal needs and values are not compromised. He mentioned the
concept of the corporate social responsibility in his book namely, The social responsibility of the
businesses man.
Many scholars presented a contradiction to the concept of corporate social responsibility. These
scholars believed that organizations do not necessarily have to engage in social responsibility.
This not the purpose of the organization. The only objective of a business is to earn profits.
Activities and practices must be implemented in a way that only revenues and profits are
maximized (Handy, 2002). Maximizing the profits is the only purpose that the business serves.
There is no other objective. However, other scholars completely rejected such concerns. They
believed that investing in corporate social responsibility wins several returns to the company in
terms of high sales, revenues, and a good reputation. Corporate social responsibility makes a
business responsibility for the ethical values that they must abide. Earning profits represent an
aggressive and greedy approach to doing businesses (Friedman). Every company must return to
the society that has enables that business to prosper and grow (Ackoff, 2002).
Corporate social responsibility has five dimensions. These dimensions are discussed below:
 Environment: taking care of the environment by ensuring harmful gases are not emitted
to it.
 Social: serving the societal needs and values
 Economic: contributing to the development of the economy (Kolk, 2003)
 Stakeholders: giving stakeholders their fair return (Agle, 2008)
 Volunteers: adhering to the ethical values

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AECOM
AECOM believes that it is their core responsibility to serve the community and protect the
environment. Various projects have been launched by the company to protect the communities,
environment and to make this world a better place to live in particularly for future generations.
AECOM designs, builds, funds and operates various projects that are environment-friendly and
serve the community. Golden 1 center has been designed and build in a way that it protects
natural resources. The project is meant to save electricity energy by optimizing the use of solar
energy. The project has been designed in a way so that water resources and energy resources are
conserved. Most of the material that is to be consumed by the project was being recycled. The
company has successfully launched projects that save energy cost and energy resources at
airports. AECOM is implementing programs with the help of USAID to improve farmers’
conditions in South Africa. The program is aimed to provide farmers with storage and record-
keeping facility. The company believes that economic, environmental social challenges have
become more complex to deal with. It wants to build more than a hundred resilient cities that
could bear these challenges and complexities. It has designed research stations that could move
from one place to another. These stations have been designed to combat the toughest
environmental conditions. These research stations reduce the impact of the environment on them.
The stations deliver efficient resource utilization. These stations save water resources
significantly.
AECOM knows that everyone on earth contributes to the environment. It has been striving to
contribute to the environment by reducing harmful impacts made to it. The company has
efficient energy utilization. AECOM strives to reduce harmful emissions. AECOM tries to make
maximum use of recycled material. It aims to reduce its consumption of paper and other valuable

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resources. Thus, the company has designed its functions in a way that contribute something
beneficial to the environment and significantly reduce harmful emissions to the environment.
AECOM knows that sustainability goals can only be attained if they work collectively with
others with a shared aim of serving the societies and environment we live in. AECOM has not
only collaborated with the organization, but it has also involved communities and people to help
them build a sustainable environment. It welcomes people and communities to work together in
order to attain sustainability goals. The people and communities serve as volunteers to make this
world a better place to live in.
AECOM has built an ambiance where people are respected and valued the most. People are the
most valuable asset for the company. The company ensures that employees are treated fairly,
there is no discrimination among them and there is a culture of collaboration and teamwork. The
company ensures that stakeholders are valued and treated fairly. The company believes in
cultural diversity where there is no discrimination based on caste, color, and creed. AECOM
ensures that employees are recruited on merit. The company believes in fairness and
transparency in everything they do.
AECOM Canada is dedicated to designing facilities and structure by collaborating the efforts of
the group of global experts. The company strictly follows the CSR guidelines to reduce its
impact on the earth and serve the masses. It follows the following principles of CSR (AECOM,
2019):
Creativity: the company allows its stakeholders and employees to come up with creative ideas
about how to design facilities that reduce the emission of harmful gasses to air and are energy
efficient. The company uses recyclable material for its projects.

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Scalability: one example that allows that company to ensure scalability are the research stations.
These stations will be designed to meet and combat the toughest environmental and climatic
challenges. The will be flexible to meet several challenges put forth by the extreme climatic
conditions.
Responsiveness: AECOM is responsive to the needs of society. It not only protects the green
environment but serves farmers to take good care of their businesses.
Glocality: the company has its location in about one hundred and fifty countries. The company
ensures that its services are flexible enough that they can be modified to local needs.
Human biases: AECOM ensures that the employees and stakeholders are fairly treated.
Recruitment is done on merit. Transparency is ensured during evaluation and reporting.
AECOM Company complies with most of the principles of corporate social responsibility.
However, the company can do much more to serve the society. Curranty the company is focused
on energy savings, green designs, optimal utilization of resources and using recycled products.
The company can serve society by spreading awareness about resource utilization among the
public and helping the public facilities to implement procedures that help them to optimize the
use of resources such as water.
 The company can introduce water conversations plans for the public.
 Implement clean water drinking programs in underprivileged areas
 Helping poor people to produce their own energy through the implementation of solar
projects.

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Thus, AECOM has the potential to go beyond its efforts to serve the society and save the
environment.
References
Ackoff, R. (2002). The corporation as a community, not as a corpus. Reflections, 14-21.
AECOM. (2019). About AECOM. Retrieved from https://www.aecom.com/ca/about-aecom/
Agle, B. D. (2008). Dialogue: Toward superior stakeholder theory. Business Ethics, 18(2), 153-
190.
Davis, I. (2005). What is the business of business? The McKinsey Quarterly, 1, 104-113.
Esty, D. &. (2006). Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to
Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage. Yale University Press.
Frederick, W. (2006). Corporation, be good! The story of corporate social responsibility. Dog
Ear Publishing.
Freeman, R. (2009). Can stakeholder theorists seize the moment? Journal of Corporate
Citizenship, 36(4), 21-24.
Friedman, M. (n.d.). The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. New York
Times Magazine.
Handy, C. (2002). What’s a business for? Harvard Business Review, 49-56.
Kolk, A. (2003). Trends in sustainability reporting by the Fortune Global 250. Business Strategy
and the Environment, 12(5).

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