Social Responsibility and Governance Research Paper

Social Responsibility and Governance - Research Paper Example The paradigm shift in the affairs of Trans-National Corporations of moving from corporate philanthropy to corporate social responsibility began in the 1990s. CSR and globalization, though theoretically miles apart, are in practice complementary to each other with their roles, at times, overlapping. In this report, we carried out a review of the literature to prove the hypothesis that CSR is a key issue in globalization. All authors studied are of the view that CSR is currently playing an important role in the conduct of global business. The larger is the size of a company, the greater is the onus on it for taking up a socially responsible role. According to Kotler and Lee (2005), corporate social responsibility includes those set of voluntary business practices and contributions that a company makes to improve community well-being. Community, here, refers to buyers, suppliers, employees and the social milieu, the company operates in. CSR also stands for operating and exceeding ethical, legal commercial and public expectations of business. For a business to be socially responsible, it is important that its practices and processes should have positive outcomes on the community. CSR is driven by the ‘moral marketplace factor’ creating increased mortality in choices made by consumers, investors, and employees (Hess, Rogovasky, and Dunfee quoted in Kotler and Lee, 2005). Companies value being perceived as good citizens and good corporate citizens. The importance of corporate social responsibility, today, is such that any large corporation can ill-afford to ignore. CSR is about wealth creation by making products and delivering services that are sustainable socially and environmentally. Advantages of CSR extend beyond immediate profit-making and bring long-term multiple benefits. Prior to the current state of globalization, corporate social responsibility was restricted to  philanthropic causes.