Corporate Social Responsibility Practices Essay

Corporate Social Responsibility Practices - Essay Example This essay stresses that intense competition plays a crucial role in creation of sustainable development practices and enhancement of the quality of products and services. Corporate responsibility is regarded as the degree to which an organisation complies with the legal guidelines and looks after the welfare of the society. The contemporary business practices show significant levels of understanding between the responsible and good corporate practices. Stakeholders and shareholders have understood the value of CSR and are focused on integrating business activities with huge societal concerns that can lead to good management practices. CSR is regarded as a technique which helps the organisation in evaluation of the business activities and its impact on the society and environment through ethical and transparent decision making. This paper declares that the World Business Council for Sustainable Development states that the CSR approach is a ‘business contribution to the sustainable economic development’. CSR includes activities such as health and safety, corporate governance and ethics, environmental stewardship, human rights and sustainable development. It focuses on aspects such as community and societal involvement, development and investment, corporate philanthropy, employee volunteering, customer satisfaction, anti-bribery, anti-corruption measures and adherence to the principles of fair competition. Business activities play a pivotal role in wealth and job creation, but the central management concern of CSR would be efficient utilisation of natural capital. (Halal, 2000). CSR activities help in efficient utilisation of human resources and capital and increasing the employee retention rate. The brand image of the company is enhanced because of the CSR activities performed by the organisatio n. Companies which recycle their products can effectively lower their expenditure. Customers are attracted towards companies which perform CSR activities efficiently. Whether or not a company implements CSR tools and techniques, the way it performs its business activities signifies clear intentions of the company. According to Hopkins (1999 cited in Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001), business organisations need to perform commercial and non-commercial responsibilities with an equal amount of importance. The non-commercial responsibilities undertaken by the company should include the well-being of the society, community, environment, government etc. The stakeholder’