Conley & Williams

Corporate Social Responsibility has changed the landscape of how businesses operate. No longer is it the goal to operate a corporation in the benefit of shareholders only, as suggested by the Ango-American theory. Instead, corporate social responsibility proponents have argued, the legitimate concerns of a corporation should include such broader objectives as sustainable growth, equitable employment practices, and long term social and environmental well-being (Conley and Williams 2005).

Many other factors come into play when operating a business, such as, employees, communities, governments, and organizations with the objective of environment interest. All these outside parties are considered to be stakeholders of the company. The United States has seen quite a few corporate scandals in last few decades, such as, Enron and MCI WorldCom. The recent unethical practices by these corporations has led to the US Government and its Accounting standards to come down harder on corporations doing business in the US and regulating stricter generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). On the other hand, Europe and the United Kingdom (“UK”) have promoted corporate social responsibility for its stakeholder’s more than financial disclosure. The European countries have implemented a system where corporations are required to disclose their respective social environmental risks and impacts from their business activities. The US corporations have also partaken in the process of disclosing their business activities and how it may cause risk to society.

In the past, corporations considered environmental organizations as opponents in how they ran their business. The environmental organizations would constantly threaten large US corporations to adapt to the environmental well-being and consider corporate social responsibility when conducting their various business activities. Currently, US corporations and environmental organizations work together in many aspects of their...