1 / 15

Ethics of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Ethics of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Glen Kurokawa, B.Sc., J.D. Regional Unit for Social & Human Sciences in Asia and the Pacific (RUSHSAP) UNESCO Bangkok 920 Sukhumvit Road, Prakanong, Bangkok 10110, THAILAND g.kurokawa@unescobkk.org. Corporate Social Responsibility.

MikeCarlo
Download Presentation

Ethics of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Ethics of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Glen Kurokawa, B.Sc., J.D. Regional Unit for Social & Human Sciences in Asia and the Pacific (RUSHSAP) UNESCO Bangkok 920 Sukhumvit Road, Prakanong, Bangkok 10110, THAILAND g.kurokawa@unescobkk.org

  2. Corporate Social Responsibility • Company’s decision to significantly increase beneficial impacts and/or significantly decrease harmful impacts to stakeholders in society. • Stakeholders: investors, employees, suppliers/distributors (i.e. anyone in value chain), consumers, and residual of society. • Can also include temporal dimension: present and future generations (superset of sustainable development and intergenerational equity).

  3. Examples of CSR • From the Asian region: • Lux: Promoting the use of soap. • Thai Oil Corporation: Environmental clean-up campaigns. • Siam Cement: university scholarships. • Honda: Environmental supply chain management and environmentally friendly technology research. • Steel Authority of India: helping townships with irrigation. • Malaysian Airlines: Below-cost rural flights. • Telkom Indonesia: Providing capital to SMEs.

  4. Social & Human Sciences (SHS) • Sector of UNESCO. Includes: • Ethics • Science and Technology • Environmental Ethics. • Bioethics. • Human security • Philosophical Dialogues • Social development

  5. CSR Ethics • Ethical dilemmas? Companies have to provide a return on investment for shareholders, so can they engage in activities designed to benefit society? • Shareholders vs. other stakeholders?

  6. Management and Ethics Literature Review: • Two main, extreme “camps”: (1) Corporations should profit-maximize. • Responsibility to shareholders, businesses are specialized for business and not other purposes, agency costs, existence of welfare state and corporate taxes. (2) Corporations should be responsible to other stakeholders. • Corporations are influential, extended public governance, extended stakeholder theory and game-theoretical derivation of neo-institutional social contract. • At least in some cases, there is a business case for CSR. Some possible mechanisms: corporate reputation, long-term sustainability. Is there anything we can add?

  7. Begin with a version of utilitarianism close to economics, and therefore reasonable, comprehensible, and persuasive to corporations: • Maximize shareholder utility value, not $$$. -Thus, takes a very conservative position. (b) Preference utilitarianism. (c) Rule utilitarianism = act utilitarianism. (d) Negative utilitarianism.

  8. Altruistic CSR • “interest in doing good for society regardless of its impact on the bottom line” • Conservative position: unethical all the time • Liberal position: ethically permissible virtually all the time • SFU: ethically mandated depending on the situation – depending on whether SUM is achieved. • Example: corporate donations for impoverished. Depends on utility indifference map of shareholders.

  9. Ethical CSR • “morally responsible to any individuals or groups where it might inflict actual or potential injury” • Conservative position: ethically mandated all the time • Liberal position: ethically mandated all the time • SFU: ethically mandated, depending on the situation – whether SUM is achieved. • Example: dumping toxic by-products. Depends on utility indifference map, as well as future utility (because of, e.g., public pressure and corporate reputation).

  10. Strategic CSR • When profit intention is aligned with societal interests • Conservative position: ethically mandated all the time • Liberal position: ethically permissible all the time • SFU: ethically mandated, depending on whether utility-maximization for shareholders gives same result as profit-maximization. • Example: purchasing a tobacco company. Depends on utility indifference map, as well as future utility (because of, e.g., public pressure and corporate reputation).

  11. Result

  12. Result

  13. Result • Provides a different position • “moderate” with regards 2 dimensions: altruistic and strategic CSR • “radical” with regards 1 dimension: to ethical CSR • Provides theoretical framework and rationale for position

  14. Corporate Takeover? • Issue: using SFU and its SUM criteria may lead to corporations not profit-maximizing, and therefore subject to takeovers. Once new management takes over, there will be profit-maximization, rendering SFU useless. • Resolution: shareholders in a utility-maximized firm will resist takeover because new management will decrease SUM. Thus, SFU can hold.

  15. End • UNESCO Bangkok, Social & Human Sciences, Programs and Activities: • http://www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=programmes_and_activities

More Related