The potential benefits of Corporate Social Responsibility relative to the costs for businesses and stakeholders
Introduction
Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR is about how businesses are encouraged to have a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, and all other members of the public. CSR describes a company's commitment to be accountable to its stakeholders. Businesses have the commitment to behave ethically and contribute to economic developments whilst also improving the quality of like for the workforce. CSR is known as ‘doing well by doing good’.
Michael Porter took CSR one step further and created another approach known as Creating shared Value where companies would actually incorporate changes in the business in order to be more socially responsible. Creating shared Value is a concept by Michael Porter based on the idea that businesses should aim to create products that would not just be beneficial to the business but to society. When a business creates a benefit to society they can actually benefit themselves economically as they will have a competitive advantage over others.
The stakeholder concept is an example of an approach contributing to Corporate Social Responsibility. This concept is where a business tries to meet the needs to as many stakeholders as possible and not just the needs of the shareholders.
Whereas the traditional shareholder approach regards the maximising the shareholder returns as their main objective. They attempt to increase the firm’s earnings, increase the market value of the shares or increase the amount of dividends paid. This approach would be an example of capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit.
Benefits
1. Motivated employees
There are many businesses that have gained an advantage from being socially responsible in various ways. One advantage of a business being socially responsible is that they can have satisfied, motivated employees therefore meaning the recruitment is easier and cheaper as productivity is high also there is lower labour turnover and so therefore resulting in lower costs. An example of a business that has benefited from this is Marks & Spencer’s. Marks & Spencer created The Marks & Start community programme which was launched in 2004. This programme was created to offer work experience to those who for whatever reason are unemployed. The people that it is aimed at include the homeless, disabled people, young unemployed, parents returning to work, students who are the first in their family to go to university and also school students (aged 14-16).
The aim of this programme is to give these individuals a taste of the working environment and the encouragement and the ability to gain employment. Each participant, regardless of target group, receives a two to four week placement in either a M&S store or office; the allocation of a ‘buddy’ (a M&S employee) as a mentor; the provision of travel expenses, lunch, a uniform (where necessary) and a reference (when requested).
M&S have benefited from the Marks & Start programme in various ways. This knowledge and skills of the workforce would have improved as they would now have an understanding of how to treat different customers, e.g. working with those with disabilities. Due to the employees being more motivated, they will produce more products and so therefore the unit costs of the products will go down as their wages are spread over more products, this will therefore increase the profit for the business.
2. Differentiation
M&S introduced the ‘Plan A’ in 2007, which included setting 100 things the company could do, by 2015, in areas such as waste, supply chain, climate change, health and sustainable raw materials. M&S has also been doing a lot of work within its supply chain and their first goal is to get 10% of its clothing to come from Fair-trade.
An example of how M&S has achieved this in another of its programmes is through its partnership with Oxfam. Together the organisations have established the Clothes Exchange designed to raise money for Oxfam’s work also reducing one million tonnes of clothing that ends up in landfill in the UK each year. The Clothes exchange was set up to encourage people to donate clothing that they don’t wear. If the clothes that are donated are from Marks and Spencer’s then they will receive a £5 gift card. The clothing that gets donated will be given to Oxfam in order to raise money for work internationally. Since 2008 the Clothes Exchange has raised £2.5m for Oxfam’s charity work.
M&S have benefited from ‘Plan A’ as they are now differentiated. By setting up this plan Marks and Spencer’s now have a USP as they are trying to be socially responsible, whereas other firms aren’t. Due to them implementing CSR this means that they would be able to charge higher prices as many people would rather pay more for products that they know have been made in a sustainable way, than products that are low cost and no made in such ways.
Disadvantages
1. Costs
Even thought there are many advantages to a business to implement CSR there are also some disadvantages. The main disadvantage to implementing CSR is the initial costs to set up such strategies. Marks & Spencer’s ‘Plan A’ cost £200million to set up, which is a large investment. However in the long run the initial invest would pay off because the profits of the business would be increased due to the increased prices. This would still depend upon whether people still demanded the firm’s products as the price would be higher.
2. Loss of customer
Another disadvantage of using CSR is that due to the increasing prices they may lose some customers. As Porter's strategy suggests a business has to be low cost or differentiated otherwise the business will fail as it can't incorporate both. M&S's aren't low price as there are other firms that compete against prices such as 'Tesco', however by them using CSR it makes them differentiated. Even though the CSR strategies may make the firm more differentiated the customers of M&S may not think that these methods are so important and would rather pay a lower price for products than for ones that are fair-trade for example. Therefore as the prices have risen for these products customers may go to competitors as they are low cost. However this will all depend on the morals for the consumers. Obviously the CSR strategy is implemented in order to benefit the stakeholders, however if the business is losing customers and therefore not generating the revenue that would have been expected, then it would be down to the shareholders to decide whether the CSR strategy has been a worthwhile investment or not depending on their values. It isn't clear to determine whether shareholders want to implement the CSR strategy in order to increase the revenue and not for the purpose of benefiting the stakeholders.
Conclusion
In conclusion it is Obvious that CSR represents a benefit to stakeholders; however the question is whether CSR benefits the shareholders in the form of lower costs or more customers in order to increase the revenue for the business. A major debate about CSR is whether having a long-term successful company allows you to undertake CSR or does CSR contribute to a long –term successful company. If a company does undertake CSR then for the process to be successful then it would need to do a lot of advertising to show consumers how they are benefiting the stakeholders, this would have to be done in store and in other various ways. This would need to be done so that consumers have awareness about what that company are trying to achieve, also it will show them that by buying the products they could also help them benefit society etc. If this is done properly then this could mean that they increase the amount of customers and so therefore revenue. If the business is already successful then if they undertake CSR it may be easier to make customers aware about the things they are doing. As they already have a large amount of repeat customers if they undertake CSR then may increase the amount of customers that they have. Overall I think that a business doesn’t have to be successful in order to undertake CSR they just need to make sure their customers are aware of their practices.
http://www.creatingsharedvalue.org/?tag=/Michael%20Porter