Does Corporate Social Responsibility Help Competitiveness?
According to Wikipedia,Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. Ideally, CSR policy would function as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business would monitor and ensure its adherence to law, ethical standards, and international norms.A business with CSR would take all the responsibility for it’s various actions and be answerable to their consumers, employees, shareholders etc.It would also take stock of how it’s activities affect the environment and take actions to stop/reduce the damage to it. It also inspires the business to better their surroundings. It would undertake certain tasks that would lead to the general betterment of society as a whole.
The number of companies or businesses embracing CSR is steadily increasing everyday. These businesses talk of how CSR has helped them understand their customer concerns better and thus serve them better. This is just one example of how CSR can help your business. But if you implement and focus on CSR in your own company you will see a marked improvement in terms of sales, customer satisfaction and general public opinion. Corporate Social responsibility will also help you acquire a competitive edge over others. A thorough understanding of CSR along with effective implementation of a well planned CSR strategy will help you outperform your contemporaries. If you understand your customers better, you will be able to make changes or improvements in your business to serve them better. This will automatically lead to bettering of standards which will carry forward the cycle of improvement thus leading to the growth of your business.
I think that you should implement CSR in your company irrespective of what your business stands to gain. Only then will you manage to implement it effectively and then the results will simply have to follow.
