Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility: Why do Urban Youth Matter?

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a broad term that suggests businesses consider things other than profits. The concept is without clearly defined or unanimously adopted applications in the world of modern American corporations. For this paper, I will focus on Milwaukee and it’s socio-economic problems affecting a local business such as real estate. The City ranks fourth in poverty, first in racial segregation, and lowest in the academic performance of African American youth nationally. The acuteness of these problems was evidenced by the uprising in racially charged youth crime that plagued Milwaukee this past summer. In mainstream circles, our local poverty and racial segregation are often treated as the insurmountable elephant in the room.

If we take a systems approach, we realize that we can do better business if we steward or at least keep stock on the resources on which we depend. In urban development, creating critical mass and brand loyalty will mitigate risk. In particular, residents of our urban core are both transient and extremely skeptical of service providers who are claiming to do “socially responsible business.” This is where we are able to lead the market by taking social initiatives that may seem too removed from the bottom line and in fact are innovations in creating cause-driven brand loyalty and investing in our future consumers’ socio-economic capabilities; the cause being helping youth in Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods succeed. This standpoint employs stakeholder theory, in the sense that those we harm or help in turn can help or harm us. In the case of urban development, changes to economic conditions and the prevailing ethical norms support adopting a core dedication to social responsibility and meeting it with actions of integrity where possible.

At Maures Development Group, our mantra is for profit and for people. Maures is a real estate development...