Discrimination—“Factories shall employ workers on the basis of their ability to do the job, not on the basis of their personal characteristics or beliefs.” • Forced labor —“Factories shall not use any prison, indentured or forced labor.” • Working conditions—“Factories must treat all workers with respect and dignity and provide them with a safe and healthy environment.” • Freedom of association —“Factories must not interfere with workers who wish to lawfully and peacefully associate, organize or bargain collectively.”
Rapid Review • Ethical behavior is influenced by an individual’s character and represented by core values and beliefs. • Kohlberg describes three levels of moral development—preconventional, conventional, and postconventional—with each of us moving step-by-step through the levels as we grow ethically over time. • Ethics training can help people better understand how to make decisions when dealing with ethical dilemmas at work. • Whistleblowers who expose the unethical acts of others have incomplete protection from the law and can face organizational penalties. • All managers are responsible for acting as ethical role models for others. • Immoral managers choose to behave unethically; amoral managers fail to consider ethics; moral managers make ethics a personal goal. • Formal codes of conduct spell out the basic ethical expectations of employers regarding the behavior of employees and other contractors.
The way organizations behave in relationship with their many stakeholders is a good indicator of their underlying ethical character. When we talk about the “good” and the “bad” in business and societal relationships, corporate social responsibility is at issue. Oft en called CSR, it is defined as an obligation of the organization to act in ways that serve both its own interests and the interests of its stakeholders, representing society at large. Even though corporate “irresponsibility” seems to get most of the media’s attention, we can’t forget that a lot of responsible behavior is taking place as well. Increasingly, this has become part of what is called the triple bottom line—how well an organization performs when measured not only on financial criteria but also on social and environmental ones. Some call this triple bottom line the 3 Ps of organizational performance—profit, people, and planet
Perspectives Differ on the Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility.
The socioeconomic view of CSR is that businesses should focus on contributions to society, not just making profits.
The classical view of CSR is that business should focus on the pursuit of profits.
A virtuous circle exists when CSR leads to improved financial performance that leads to more social responsibility.
Shared value approaches business decisions with understanding that economic gains and social progress are interconnected.
The benefit corporation, or B Corp, is legally committed to both creating profits for shareholders and creating value for employees, communities, and the environment as stakeholders.
A social business is one in which the underlying business model directly addresses a social problem.
Social entrepreneurs take business risks to find novel ways to solve pressing social problems.
A social responsibility audit measures and reports on an organization’s performance in various areas of corporate social responsibility
Rapid Review • Corporate social responsibility is the obligation of an organization to act in ways that serve both its own interests and the interests of its stakeholders. • In assessing organizational performance today, the concept of the triple bottom line evaluates how well organizations are doing on economic, social, and environmental performance criteria. • Criteria for evaluating corporate social performance include how well the corporation meets economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary responsibilities. • The argument against corporate social responsibility says that businesses should focus on making profits; the argument for corporate social responsibility says that businesses should use their resources to serve broader social concerns. • The concept of sustainable development refers to making use of environmental resources to support societal needs today while also preserving and protecting the environment for use by future generations. • Social businesses and social entrepreneurs pursue business models that help to directly address important social problems.