University Project: Implementing CSR Activities for Sustainability

This project is a comprehensive case study analyzing the implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within Access Keyboards Ltd. The project begins with a project management plan, outlining the aim to critically analyze the impact of CSR on sustainability and competitive advantage. It includes project objectives, assumptions, scope, cost, and a detailed timeline. The work breakdown structure and Gantt chart provide a visual representation of the project's phases and timelines. The project incorporates a project logbook detailing small-scale research using a mixed-methods approach, including interviews with the manager and an officer, as well as a survey among employees to gather qualitative and quantitative data. The research explores the importance of CSR for sustainability, the activities undertaken to address CSR requirements, and areas for improvement. Data analysis and recommendations are provided based on the research findings. The project concludes with a reflection on the value of conducting the research and suggestions for enhancing the business performance of Access Keyboards Ltd. The project also identifies potential risks and challenges associated with CSR implementation, offering strategies to mitigate these issues and ensure the success of the company's CSR initiatives.

MANAGING SUCCESFUL BUSINESS
University
IMPLEMENTING CSR ACTIVITIES WITHIN ORGANISATION
TO MEET SUSTAINABLE OBJECTIVES: A CASE STUDY IF
ACCESS KEYBOARDS LIMITED
Name
ID
Unit Title
Code Number
Lecturer’s name

MANAGING SUCCESFUL BUSINESS
Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................... 3
Task 1: Project management plan...................................................................................3
P1. Project aim.................................................................................................................3
Project objectives.............................................................................................................3
Assumptions.....................................................................................................................4
P2. Project management pan...........................................................................................4
P3. Work breakdown structure, and time plan.................................................................8
Work breakdown structure............................................................................................... 8
Gantt chart....................................................................................................................... 9
Critical path.................................................................................................................... 10
Task 2: Project logbook..................................................................................................10
P4. Small-scale research 700........................................................................................10
Task 3: Performance review.......................................................................................... 16
P5. Data analysis........................................................................................................... 16
P6. Recommendations...................................................................................................18
Task 4............................................................................................................................ 19
P7. Reflection on value for conducting the research......................................................19
Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 20
References.....................................................................................................................21
Appendix........................................................................................................................ 23

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Introduction
CSR (Corporate social responsibility) is often regarded as a broad term for describing
the effort of an organisation behind improving the society in various ways. As opined by
Aguinis and Glavas (2012), companies are involving highly in their CSR strategy in
order to strengthen thei9r global and local communities. Furthermore, organisations are
considering the CSR to target different significant marketing segments such as
Improved Public Image, Increased coverage of social media, better employee
engagement and retained investors through attracting them. This study is aimed at
explaining the topic in brief to unveil detailed information and knowledge about the
implementation of CSR in order to enhance the sustainability in Access Keyboards Ltd.
Researcher has selected the small sized company (Access Keyboards Limited) with
workforce of 15-20 employees and with small annual income of €1 million in the year
2016. The company manufactures and sells the computer hardware products in local
market of UK (Manta.com, 2017).
Task 1: Project management plan
P1. Project aim
The aim of this study is to analyse the consequences of corporate social responsibility
over sustainability and competitive advantage critically. Researcher is going to use real
and practical examples from Access Keyboards Ltd for identifying the scope of
implementation for findings.
Project objectives
 To develop the project plan for examining the CSR role in corporate
 To evaluate the significance of CSR in Access Keyboards
 To identify the existing barriers of Access Keyboards in implementing the CSR
strategies to ensure sustainability and competitive advantage for the business
 To suggest relevant strategies for mitigating the identified barriers

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Assumptions
 Access Keyboards might require the incorporation of CSR strategies for retaining
existing consumers and employees and attracting the new ones
 Existing strategies of Access Keyboards might be adequate to satisfy the
shareholders thus, company may not be required to implement new strategies of
CSR
P2. Project management pan
Scope
Based on the knowledge gathered from theories and market researches included in
current project, researcher has tried to highlight the possible issues that may arise to
Access Keyboards for handling CSR insufficiently. However, direct changes are not
entertained in the company for observing and evaluating their impact. Apart from that,
researcher has focused on analysing the feedback collected through this research and
tallying them with relevant theoretical concepts for suggesting the apt findings or
changes for the company. Therefore, researcher can derive to positive and effective
outcome from research project.
Cost
Researcher has estimated the expected cost for completing this research project
successfully. Researcher has estimated €450 that includes meeting with respondents to
collect qualitative information and conducting the survey to gather the quantitative data.
However, researcher has estimated the cost for implementation of recommendation
around €3000 that will be provided during end of the study. This cost excludes the total
cost for the current project. The above cost is designed based after evaluating the cost
in each step of the research to come up with apt findings.
Time
Researcher has taken exact 28 days for completing this project. The first 7 days were
spent behind collecting the theoretical knowledge about CSR (Corporate Social

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Responsibility) and its impact over business sustainability and attractiveness.
Researcher has compared and contrasted the wide arguments of authors about
understanding the prospect of CSR and relating it with the profitability of a company.
Therefore, through acquiring the theoretical knowledge, researcher then further
captured understanding about implication of CSR in different companies in next 5 days.
Thereafter, researcher has gathered valuable information about present business
operations of Access Keyboards and its big competitors in next 5 days. Then researcher
got busy in interviewing the high ranked officers of Access Keyboards that took almost a
week or 7 days. This schedule was very significant in order to collect the primary data
and making their analysis for relevant output from the project. However, researcher took
only 4 days to conduct the survey where existing consumers of Access Keyboards were
involved. Researcher has collected all the data and information collected from this
survey and analysed them to learn or understand the impact of present business
operation of Access Keyboards over customer service. However, the project
recommendation implication can be expected to be out in 3 months.
Quality
The quality of this research project is relied over its performance in achieving research
objective. Through addressing the research objective that is drawn upon evaluating the
topic, researcher has tried to align the research objective with the sustainability of
Access Keyboards. Apart from that, in the end, researcher has assessed the success of
project based upon the recommended strategies for enhancing the business
performance of Access Keyboards.
Communication
As opined by Yang and Kao (2012), communication is very crucial tool for a researcher
to deal with respondents efficiently and gathering their viewpoints more deeply.
Furthermore, in many instances it has been found that consumers are likely to respond
independently with the better communicator. In the current project, researcher has used
relevant communication modes and the communicative channels for ensuring
appropriate interaction with shareholders of Access Keyboards. It is regarded as crucial

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element to ensure proper development of the project place since communication mode
and channel widely affect the information and data used in the project work. Researcher
has tried to establish better communication with participation along with privacy
maintenance to enable respondents to give their opinion independently. Some of the
channels and mode used in the present research project is face-to-face, telephonic
interaction, virtual and survey communication. In order to communicate with officials of
Access Keyboards and collect the qualitative data, researcher has telephonic and face-
to-face interaction. On the other hand, in order to deal with consumer, researcher has
used the social media platform such as online measurement, online questionnaires and
so on.
Resource
However, financial resources are important and already highlighted in the above
section; researcher has marked some other important aspects or resources useful in
accomplishing the research project successfully. Researcher has used ample number of
journals, books, newsletters, case studies and websites for gathering the secondary
data. These data were very significant in understanding the aspects of CSR over
competitive advantage and sustainable growth of an organisation. Apart from that,
researcher has also gathered the primary data such as feedback of higher officials and
consumers of Access Keyboards to acquire the practical understanding about the issue.
Furthermore, tools of data processing and other electronic equipments were also used
for evaluating the data and developing the project successfully.
Risk
As per the viewpoint of Von (2011), many research projects over CSR could not be
implemented successfully or have not produced positive output for the company due to
the application requirement was high expertise to enhance the sustainability and
competitive advantage that is relied over other business strategies as well. Similarly,
Access Keyboards might also become a victim of such consequences and lose their
existing consumers ad highly skilled employees. Moreover, if Access Keyboard will fail
to meet with basic requirements of employees or consumers, huge disappointment can

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be generated among the consumers and they could move on to other organisation thus,
chance for competitive threat could be high. Moreover, shareholders might also become
uninterested in participation with further business strategy for growth and development.
Employee morale can be decreased and key players might not be able to promote
business development. Apart from that, vague response from the participants may lead
to inappropriate findings that could leave serious impact over current business operation
of Access Keyboards. The chances of denunciation of participants could grow and
hamper the successful accomplishment of research project.

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P3. Work breakdown structure, and time plan
Work breakdown structure
Figure 1: structure of Work Breakdown for project planning
(Source: created by author)
ProjectPlanningIdentifyingtheneedTheoriticalresearchTasksRecommendationTestingTrainingtraningoneforanalysis

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Gantt chart
ca
te
g
or
y
Actions Days
1 2-5 5-
10
10-
12
12-
14
14-
18
18-
21
21-
25
25-
29
29-
34
34-
37
A Identifying the need
Determining the project requirement
Identifying the processes required
Identifying the data requirement
Breaking down aim into the smaller
objectives
Allocating the Resources
(Financial/Non-financial)
Determination of requirement of project
Identification of required processes
Identifying data requirements
B Theoretical researches
data analysis of competitor and the
company
C acquisition of Primary data (Interview,
Survey)
D Evaluating the collected data
Verifying of primary data findings
through theories
Analysing and summarising findings
E Recommendation
F Conclusion
Submission

End
A
B
C
D E F
Start
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Table 1: Gantt chart
(Source: created by author)
Critical path
From the figure drawn upon process or path selection of researcher, the most apt and
relevant path can be identified that is quick and accurate result achievable.
Figure 2: Critical path of project
(Source: Created by author)
The above-mentioned table already identified about the task segregation for
accomplishing the project, thus in the current section better comprehension are
mentioned only with categorised used in critical path.
Task 2: Project logbook
P4. Small-scale research
Methods applied
The researcher has use positivism research philosophy merged with descriptive
research purpose and deductive research approach for conducting the study as they
avail opportunity to evaluate different types of research data for evaluation (Adams and
Lawrence, 2014). Although case study, action research, focus group or experiments
Start

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could be conducted for the data collection, the researcher engaged in survey for
acquiring data from respondents in their natural environment. This was essential for
ensuring unbiased feedback in part of the respondents (Wahyuni, 2012).
The researcher has utilised simply mixed method for research (Teddlie and Tashakkori,
2011). For qualitative data, the researcher has conducted structured telephonic
interviews through open-ended questions with 2 officers and the manager of Access
Keyboard Ltd, while only the manager and one officer agreed to participate in interview.
For quantitative data, the researcher has conducted survey among 15 employees of the
company. The researcher distributed online questionnaire containing 4 close-ended
questions among the employees of the company. The MCQ style questions for the
survey were developed based on Likert’s scale (Tuli, 2011). Although all the
stakeholders of the company come under the category of population for both the
qualitative and quantitative data collection process the researcher has applied non-
probability sampling method and chosen the manager, 2 officials and 15 employees of
the company to ensure that people with first-hand experience with the research issue
are only approached for data collection. As 1 officer refused to contribute in the study
thus total sample size for the study is 17.
Qualitative research
Q1. How is import CSR for sustainability forAccess Keyboard Ltd?
Respondents Responses
Manager Meeting the CSR responsibilities is extremely important for our company,
existence of the company in the market depends on the company’s ability to
meet the CSR requirements
Officer The company has to follow its corporate and social responsibilities to avoid
legal obligations
Table 2: Import is CSR for sustainability for Access Keyboard Ltd
(Source: Created by author)
Q2. What activities does Access Keyboard Ltd undertake to address CSR
requirements?

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Respondents Responses
Manager The organisation has arranged professional and safety trainings for its
employees
It also meets the import standards and regulations of UK government for its
hardware acquisition
Officer Regular safety and disaster training is provided to the employees
Customer safety are kept in mind while selling the products
Table 3: Access Keyboard Ltd’s attempt of addressing CSR requirements
(Source: Created by author)
Q3. What areas of improvement does Access Keyboard Ltd need to immediately
focus on?
Respondents Responses
Manager Employee engagement through meetings and group activities
Officer Better infrastructure for making the work environment more suitable for female
employees
Table 4: Improvements needed in CSR activities of Access Keyboard Ltd
(Source: Created by author)
Quantitative research
Q1. How far are you satisfied with the hygiene and safety precautions of your
workplace?
Options Total respondents Number of responses Response %
Highly satisfied 15 2 13%
Satisfied 15 3 20%
Neutral 15 6 40%
Dissatisfied 15 4 27%
Highly dissatisfied 15 0 0%
Mean Median Mode SD
2.8 3 3 1.014185106
Table 5: Employee satisfaction with hygiene and safety