Corporate Social Responsibility

The European Commission defines CSR as the “responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society“. Hence the responsibility pyramid is a desired viewpoint on how companies should be structured and focused. Building from bottom up on required (economic), expected (legal and ethical) and desired factors (social, environmental, political) it incorporates all needed aspects to be viewed as a good corporate citizen. In particular the third factor consisting out of social, environmental and political – also known as the 3-Bottom-Line by John Elkington is viewed as a major achievement in a company’s development (e.g. Gram Vikas). I liked backing-up this newly acquired knowledge by putting theory into context and analysing the Sanlu Fonterra case together in class. Identifying important stakeholders (Chinese government, consumers and Fonterra NZ), and looking at the case from different viewpoints (moral universalism (existence of a universal ethic) vs. moral relativism (different cultures having different standards of right and wrong)), thinking on what could have been done priory to going public (e.g. preventing a major scandal by communicating with victims) made it easier for me to understand the newly learned concepts. Incorporating the reading of Donaldson, T. (1996) “Values in Tension. Ethics Away from Home.” into the lecture I particularly enjoyed discussing Unilever’s changing role in the field of CSR, building on the HBR interview “Captain Planet” (2012) with Unilever CEO Paul Polman.

My key take-aways from the first session were that there is not only one way out of a crisis as circumstances have to be considered and decision-making should always be guided by human values. When dealing with crises in general it is important to act on feedback and weak signals of all stakeholders. Further, using management systems like stakeholder maps can increase efficiency in critical situations.

I in particular liked the idea to have the Global Health Affairs...