Corporate Social Responsibility

csr social responsibility or Brand Building excercise
Corporate social responsibility is also known as corporate citizenship. It exactly means corporate houses who have made a lot profits from society how much responsible they are towards their society. CSR, now a day, has taken a strategic advantage of being in business world. Traditionally governments and non govt. organizations were expected to look after the troubles of society but now due to the rapidly changing of aspects of business have made CSR a significant factor.
CSR may be a philanthropic tool to get popularity among the masses but it has also brought another concept of developing the surroundings with the helping hand of corporate. it is like a family structure where parents are helping their weak and innocent kids to get up and to grow up in their surveillance. We can recall it as fraternity concept to develop on a global stage.
We can find a lots of examples where corporate have helped poor countries to develop their basic infrastructure e.g. education, health, accommodation, transport, lifestyle and in all other aspects like British Petroleum in Columbia, Chevron Texaco in Nigeria, Pepsi in Myanmar.
Corporations have an obligation of society as they impact environment, institution, and a variety of stakeholders. They generate new innovative ideas to eradicate poverty and to find some experimental activities to run in both urban and rural areas. Corporate leadership can show high degree of commitment to the core values of business and empower their managers to same.
The one strategic issue connected with CSR is that it has become a tool of PR exercise and brand building. As one corporate which has done something for poor people, infrastructure or for environment can directly or indirectly get the due benefits for their deeds. Corporation publish their philanthropic activities on their commercial websites and get all these things published in media it helps them to crate a magnanimous image in society. In this way corporations may claim their undue advantage for the activities performed by them. The exact concept of CSR which deals with unselfish duties of corporations towards society and communities where they have earned and till an extent their business activities have adversely affected human lives and their surroundings. Sometimes the core business of companies was major source of livelihood of community.
So we can see by supporting people, corporations are not doing something extra they are only trying to pay their due obligations towards society. It must be totally non-commercial objective oriented. Now a days advertising and Public Relations have become critical in brand building. Market has seen throat cut competition we can hardly expect something to happen which is not business oriented. Here the difference lies CSR sometimes is used as a brand building exercise.
We can take some corrective actions regarding CSR. One has all the rights to spend his money in his way.CSR is not a compulsion it’s a kind of social obligation to be done. Many corporations have done a fantastic job even without publicity and have won rewards and appreciations for their deeds. Some campaigns and activities done in the name of CSR have made their objective pure commercial and brought all the benefits for corporate houses. Media can not give it a tag of CSR as these activities were totally business oriented, keeping the strategic importance of CSR in mind, smart corporations have done wonder to win name, goodwill, and even financial benefits for the organization.
We have find ways to separate business and Social responsibilities. We can not let anyone take undue benefits of CSR. We have some wonderful instances where corporations have done truly selfless jobs for the community. We can make them examples to set benchmarks. This can motivate other corporate who really have their concern for society to come ahead and pay the obligation of environment.