Corporate social responsibility: concepts and practices

Business

Corporate Social Responsibility

BP has made its name synonymous with Beyond Petroleum. It has rebranded itself to be seen as a company that sees a future past reliance on fossil fuels. The company is as committed to advancing their oil expansion as they ever have been. As the Gulf of Mexico oil spill highlights there are serious environmental and human concerns when it comes to drilling for oil. The Gulf spill, which has left 11 people dead and 17 others injured, is about the size of Rhode Island. It is moving across the northern Gulf of Mexico between the mouth of the Mississippi River and Florida. It is running wide and threatening the coastlines. It is running deep and traveling beneath the ocean at about 5,000 feet 13,000 feet under the seabed. The Deepwater Horizon well has been leaking nearly 5,000 barrels per day. It has shut down fishing across the affected areas, damaging fragile habitats and has put many animals in peril (Emani, 2010).

For many weeks now many people have been wondering who would be the first to lose their job because of the spill. As crude has continued to pour into the Gulf of Mexico and the world economy has fought to recover from the financial crisis, corporate social responsibility might seem like a far reaching concept. Surely there is a need for more corporate responsibility, not less. But many of the business disasters that have happened lately have been facilitated by the mini-industry of corporate social responsibility, known as CSR. The gulf oil spill and the financial crisis have taught us, that the heart of the relationship between business and society doesn't lie with the charitable deeds that companies do in their off-hours but whether they are doing their day jobs in ways that help, or hurt, everyone else. With hindsight, that attention to safety turns out to have had much greater social value than any number of creative CSR drives (Freeland, 2010).

The problem with CSR is that it often makes things unclear. The main goal of most business is to make money. In the case of BP this is done by producing energy. Forgoing that core goal can be bad news for business leaders. But getting perplexed about the principal job of business is even more dangerous. CSR asks that people believe that the interests of an individual company and those of the wider community are in line with each other. Corporate social responsibility is often thought to be very unobjectionable. It shouldn't be overlooked though that the chief social responsibility of business is to make a buck and the social responsibility of government is to be sure that corporate greed is channeled and constrained for the greater good of everyone (Freeland, 2010).

When companies comply with CSR regulations, the job of regulating agencies becomes a whole lot easier. This helps to protect consumers and the environment from mistreatment. Governmental policies are intended to assist both consumers and organizations. There are several government regulations that have put into place to protect the environment from degradation. Governmental CSR policies do not only assist consumers or organizations, they assist both the consumer and the organization (The Impact of Government Regulations on Corporate Social Responsibility - How Government Policies Shape CSR, 2009).

It is often said that international environmental laws do not differ from one another. European environmental regulations are very similar to the U.S. environmental laws. The United States Environmental Protection Agency has set up a database that contains all of the contaminated lands in the U.S. This database includes existing and formerly contaminated lands. The European Union, especially France has also put into place databases to track existing and formerly contaminated lands within France. These efforts are there to protect the public from coming into contact with contaminated lands. International governmental environmental policies do not differ from one another in the fact that they all seek to protect the public and the organizations (The Impact of Government Regulations on Corporate Social Responsibility - How Government Policies Shape CSR, 2009).

Domestic as well as international politics have greatly shaped the regulation of businesses. It is apparent that most businesses favor dealing with the national government while shaping business regulations rather than dealing with the international government where policies are not clearly set down. They like dealing with the national governments because of the trust and relationship that they have built with the domestic government in shaping the business atmosphere. Business policies that are laid down by the national government are more familiar and clearly defined as opposed to regulations set forth by the international governments (The Impact of Government Regulations on Corporate Social Responsibility - How Government Policies Shape CSR, 2009).