Responsible Management: CSR, Sustainability, and Business Ethics

This essay provides a detailed exploration of corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability, and business ethics as key components of responsible management. It defines CSR as a managerial concept where organizations consider environmental and social concerns alongside economic benefits, emphasizing the importance of stakeholders such as shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, government, environment, and society. The essay discusses various CSR practices, including ethical and cultural audits, and highlights the shareholder, stakeholder, and business ethics theories. Sustainability is presented as a concept focused on economic activities that do not harm natural resources, emphasizing the triple bottom line (environmental, financial, and social) and tools like impact assessments. Business ethics is defined as doing the right things in the right manner, promoting ethical practices and preventing unethical ones like discrimination and bribery. The essay concludes by emphasizing the interconnectedness of CSR, sustainability, and business ethics in creating responsible business practices, particularly in addressing issues like poor quality, legal noncompliance, and exploitation of resources and employees.

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

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concept of sustainability, natural resources are limited and an organization should use the same
wisely. In order to fulfill the need of today, the environment cannot place in danger.
While discussing sustainability, the framework of the triple bottom line is also required to have a
look upon. This is an accounting framework with three parts namely environmental, financial,
and social. In other words, this is to state, that triple bottom line considers there a dimension of
performance or under this framework; the performance of the company is evaluated based on
above-mentioned three factors. This framework uses to determine and measure the sustainability
of an organization. Triple bottom line (TBL) reporting can be used as a good tool to achieve
sustainability goals (Henriques and Richardson, 2013). In an earlier time, organizations were
used to evaluate their performance based on profits only. It means if an organization was earning
good profits, then the same was used to be called a profitable and positive organization.
Nevertheless, the TBL framework is just different as it also considers a social and economic
factor in the evaluation of the performance of the overall organization. Here this is to mention
that the economic performance of the company is evaluated in dollars but for the measurement of
social and environmental dimensions, originations may use the index or other ways. There are
various management tools, which can be useful to check the level of sustainability in the
organization. Impact assessment is one such tool, which is helpful to evaluate the social,
economic, and environmental impact of plans, strategies, actions, and policies of the organization
(Oecd.org, 2019). Sustainability Footprint Assessment is another tool of management in the
sector of sustainability, which calculates the energy and resource footprint of an organization
across different countries/places (Sustainability-supplychain.com, 2019).
In addition to CSR and sustainability, one more theory of responsible enterprise is also there
which is well known as Business Ethics. In order to understand the meaning of this theory, this is

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to mention that business ethics is about doing the right things in the right manner and at the right
time (Rae, 2013). Ethics is a set of moral principles and business ethics is a form of professional
ethics which examine ethical problems that may arise in a business environment. It is also known
as corporate ethics. In day-to-day business operations, managers of business often face many
critical situations where they are not able to find a solution that brings no harm or minimum
harm to anyone. In such a situation, business ethics plays an important role. This theory demands
that the managers of the business should lead the ethical practices in the performance of their
duty. Here ethical practices refer to the activities that are supportive of the standard of the
profession and ensure maximum goodness for the parties involved in a particular situation. A
business that adopts business ethics has positive value in the eyes of the stakeholders, as they
know that the business is responsible towards them and their interest is secure with the same.
Many of the practices are there which can be considered as an ethical practice, including
promotion of community involvement, encouragement of positive behavior, enforcement of
ethical values and many others. In addition to the ethical practices, the focus is also required to
be made on unethical practice. Such practices include discrimination, bribery, and insider trading
and so on (Fernando, 2012). Business ethics strongly prevent such practices and try to improvise
the ethical and positive culture at the workplace. The subjective ethics works on certain
principles namely honesty, integrity, fairness, accountability, leadership, promise-keeping, moral
and respect for others (Josephsononbusinessethics.Com, 2019). By adopting these principles in
behavior, the manager can ensure ethical practices. For the management of ethics at the
workplace, the company can adopt many ethics management instruments. Development of a
code of conduct is one of them. Code of ethics is a set of the guideline, which helps the
organizational people with their conduct in accordance with ethical standards

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(Businessdictionary.com, 2019). Ethics hotline is another measure that can be used by managers
to ensure business ethics at the workplace. This is a facility provided by the organization to
employees so that they can address the issue related to unethical practices to managers. An
employee can address issues such as theft, fraud, harassment, discrimination, safety, and security
by the help of this model (Getintouch.com, 2019).
The role of business ethics becomes more crucial at the time of a challenging situation. Many
times, managers have to choose one out of two possibilities out of which not even a single one is
perfect from the perspective of ethics. Such situations are known as ethical dilemmas. These are
extremely complicated issues, which cannot be solved easily. The main issue with the ethical
dilemma is that the same does not offer an obvious solution and manager have to apply their
sense and ethics to deal with such situations. Responsible management is the one that
understands the value of business ethics and its impact on the parties related thereto.
By above-mentioned discussion, the meaning, scope, and significance of all the three theories of
responsible management are clear. Now, the next thing to understand is the framework and
manner in which three of them can be organized in order to make business responsible. All the
studied theories are closely connected with each other and have the same objective that is to
make an origination responsible. For instance, CSR seems to be a contributory effort towards
sustainability as it considers all of its dimensions. Management of the organization faces many
issues in their day-to-day working. These issues can be related to many factors. Responsibility
feature of management can be questioned for anything such as poor quality of goods, non-
compliance with legal standards, unfair use of natural resources, and exploitation of employees.
Every issue and challenge that a responsible management face is related to at least one of the
dimension of the Triple bottom line always. It means stakeholders of an organization can majorly

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be divided into three categories i.e. economy, society, and environment. Employees, customers,
suppliers, and government come under the broad category of the social dimension. As per the
concept of corporate governance, a business is responsible for all the stakeholders. This can be
understood with the help of a few examples: - Use of plastic in business practices/production is a
challenge for the responsible management that falls in the category of environmental dimension
of sustainability. This creates an ethical dilemma for the business that whether they should focus
on the interest of shareholders by using cheap material or interest of environment.
Another issue is the overworking of employees. This challenge comes under the category of
social dimension as the exploitation of employees. This again creates ethical issues for the
manager of the business. At last the issues which fall under the category of the economic
dimension of sustainability is using the material, which gives short-term benefit but reduces
goodwill of organization in the long term and affects the overall value of a business. Using a
proper model of CSR, sustainability and business ethics, management can ensure to be
responsible. Integration of all these theories can lead to a positive impact on the business. In
order to become a responsible enterprise, a business should consider all the studied theories.
Starting from the very beginning, this is to state that management should identify its stakeholders
firstly. Until unless the same will not be identified, the management would not be able to develop
its business practices. Afterward, these stakeholders can be categorized in different dimensions
of the triple bottom line. For the same dimensions, similar kind of policies and practices can be
developed. CSR is a significant step that the organization can use to address issues related to
various dimensions of the triple bottom line. When the organization will adopt the good practices
for each stakeholder, there will not be any challenge for social, economic an environmental
dimensions. The company can adopt many CSR activities such as customer concern, business

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activity, respect for human rights, social contribution activities and many others
(Global.kyocera.com, 2019). It will ensure sustainable social, economic, and environmental
development. In addition, to adopt CSR activities, an organization should ensure that these
practices are sustainable. It means doing something for stakeholders is a different thing and
doing the same in a sustainable manner is another one. In this manner, responsibility can be
ensured by CSR and sustainability. Business ethics should also be integrated with CSR and
sustainability. Whenever there is an issue regarding the responsibility of management, the same
consist of ethical issues for the different dimension of the triple bottom line under which they
fall. Business ethics says that an organization should adopt CSR and sustainability practices.
When management is responsible, there are very few chances of ethical dilemmas. Nevertheless,
if there is one then management should consider the interest of all the dimensions of the triple
bottom line. Sometimes, these theories become contradictory, for instance, the economic
dimension of sustainability demand sensible use of economic resources. If an organization uses
more machines instead of human capital, this may lead to a negative impact on the lives of the
employee, which defeat the value of the social dimension. Such situations create ethical
dilemmas. To deal with such situation, management should compare the results and then should
take the decision applying stakeholder theory of CSR as the same ensure maximization of
positive results and make the management responsible.
In a conclusive way, this is to state that responsible management is the need of today’s time.
Only those organizations, which understand the value of responsible practice, can be successful
in the long run. In the presented essay, the focus has been made on different theories of
responsible management. CSR is one of the significant activities that have a different theory and
consider the interest of different stakeholders in different activities. Further sustainability

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demands responsible management to adopt economically, socially and environmentally
sustainable practices. Business ethics is a set of moral values that define an organization should
adopt the moral and responsible practice. In order to become responsible, all three theories are
important. These are interrelated and sometimes prove contradictory but it becomes the
responsibility of the management to integrate all of them together for the maximum positive
results and in this manner, management of an organization do the necessary as discussed above.

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