Responsibility In-Focus: Deconstructing “Corporate Social Responsibility” Concept

Literature Review

The word “social” in Corporate Social Responsibility is an interesting linchpin of understanding. Society as defined in Oxford Dictionary (2012) relevant to this paper, is “the community of people living in a particular country or region and having shared customs, laws, and organizations”. Usually the society of a corporate comprises of all the stakeholders who are directly or indirectly affected by the company’s activities. According to Freeman (1984), “A stakeholder in an organization is (by definition) any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievements of the organization’s objectives.” Taking a step further and understanding the constituents of stakeholder theory, a model developed by Werther and Chandler (2010: 35), suggests that there are three types of stakeholders which represent the ‘society’ of an organization: economic stakeholders, organizational stakeholders and societal stakeholders. All these stakeholders contribute to the ‘social’ part of Corporate Social Responsibility. The understanding of the concept of society would enable scholars to understand the environment in which both the corporate and the “society” of the corporate interact and affect each other.

The second part of the term is to understand the “social responsibility” aspect of Corporate Social Responsibility. Bowen (1953: 6) viewed social responsibility as “it (SR) refers to the obligations of businessmen to pursue those policies, to make those decisions, or to follow those lines of action which are desirable in terms of the objectives and values of our society”. Supporting Bowen partially, another veteran scholar, McGuire (1963) stated “the idea of social responsibility supposes that the corporation has not only economic and legal obligations, but also certain responsibilities to society which extend beyond these obligations.” Again, Walton (1967) defines social responsibility as “in short, the new concept of social responsibility recognizes the intimacy of the relationships between the corporation and the society and realizes that such relationships must be kept in mind by top managers as the corporation and the related groups pursue their respective goals”. This definition of Walton indicates the interconnected nature of social responsibility that the corporate must undertake for their benefit and for the benefit of society at large.