The importance of Corporate Socail Responsibility in relation to other corporate objectives

Corporate objectives are goals or targets that concern the business as a whole, providing a sense of direction to the whole organisation. These objectives are made by those at the top of the hierarchy, either the owner/ chairperson or managing director. They act as a focus for decision making and so is much easier to coordinate actions and so leads to improvements in efficeincy and overall a more productive and motivated workforce. Also it enables the firm to evaluate the performance as they have set targets which is easy to measure if they have been met, which is a vital means of control. They also provide a framwork in which business strategies can be drawn up. The type of corporate objectives that are incorporated will ultimateley depend on the charachteristic of the firm, such as the size and the structure, as smaller firms will have differerent corporate objectives to that of a larger firm. For example a smaller firm may have the objective to survive while the larger firm may have the objective of profit maximisation.

An example of a corporate objective for Marks & Spencers is increasing their international business to 15% to 20% by 2012. M&S also have objectives not solely based on profit as they have a plan A in which they have 80 commitments they will aim to achieve in order to make the firm more sustainable by 2015. The commitments made by M&S include reducing their carbon emissions by 8% and also by reducing the amount of waste that is sent to landfill by 33%.

Corporate objective ultimateley need to be SMART. Firstly the objectivesneed to be Specific which means stating exactly what the objective relates to. Secondly the objectives must be measurable so that it could provide a yardstick against which performance can be measured.Third, it has to be agreed by all those directly involved, including shareholders, directors and managers and thus they are more likely to understand and be more motivated to achieve the objective. Fourth it must be realistic as in order to push the business forward and maximise potential it needs to be achievable as otherwise if is unachievable it could have the reverse effect and demotivate employees. Finally the objectives must be timescaled and so the firm must decide when it should be achieved and so allows the firm to measure if the objective has been achieved. SMART targets act as a focus for decision making and effort and so provides the framework for deciding and determining strategy. Also it provides the firm with a means of evaluating the businesses performance and so if targets aren't achieved can help pinpoint their mistakes. If the corporate objectives weren't SMART then there wood be poor decision making as the firm wouldn't have any direction and so therefore there would be a lack of efficeincy and so productivity.