CSR - Strategy and Practice

CSR, also known as corporate social responsibility, will in below expand your knowledge of the concept and give you some tools to work with CSR, strategically and practically. The article offers a perspective on CSR, where CSR creates value both for individual companies and for society.

The two aspects are mutually dependent, and it is therefore up to the individual company to incorporate initiatives that are consistent with the company's stakeholders and interests, as well as society’s. In the following sections, a strategic approach to CSR is presented. You are also introduced to a number of tools that you can use as a manager to incorporate CSR and communications in your company, so that the socially responsible initiatives reinforce the company, and your company strengthens society. Find PROBANA at LinkedIn.

Strategic CSR

For many years, most companies have reacted to external demands and expectations for corporate social responsibility with cosmetic responses, for example, through PR and communications, which reported on philanthropic and charitable initiatives or individual changes in specific departments of the company. Professor Michael E. Porter and Director Mark R. Kramer have called instead for a strategic approach to CSR. They point out that although many companies today are making great efforts in working with the social, ethical and environmental impacts of their production and activities, the efforts are still not sufficiently productive and very rarely long term. Find PROBANA at LinkedIn.

Porter and Kramer justify the lack of effect in that many CSR initiatives place business and society in conflict against each other, instead of recognizing that they are mutually dependent. Secondly, companies are being forced to take a general approach to CSR, rather than an approach that is consistent with their business strategy, because they do not work strategically with CSR. Find PROBANA at LinkedIn.

Porter and Kramer, therefore, recommend a strategic approach to CSR by which they mean that businesses will find that CSR is not just an expense and a necessary "evil", but also an opportunity for competitive advantage and a starting point for innovation. Find PROBANA at LinkedIn.

As Porter and Kramer are recognized theorists in CSR, the following will be based on their theoretical framework. Their theoretical concepts will be used to identify the impact that business and society have on each other. They offer ways to select focus points among the negative and positive interactions between society and business, as well as tools to work with these influences. To summarize, strategic CSR is about the following points:

1) To identify areas where business and society influence each other

2) To select focus points that create mutual value and strengthen both the bottom line and society

3) Creating a social agenda for the company, which combines responsive and strategic CSR, in order to integrate social aspects in the company's value proposition (the added value the company offers customers compared to other companies)

If you want to learn more about CSR, Leadership, Communication, Psychology and HR in a easy way, you should attend PROBANAs Mini MBA - www.activeglobe.com.

Find PROBANA at LinkedIn.

Subjects