20/10/2018
Soul of the economy paper
Corporate social responsibility is about how companies manage the business processes to produce an overall positive impact on society. Corporate social responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically as well as contribute to economic development and at the same time improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families, local communities, and the society at large. It is mandatory for corporate social responsibility to require companies to acknowledge that they should be publicly accountable for their financial performance, and for their social and environmental record. They also encompass the extent to which companies should promote human rights, democracy, community improvement, and sustainable economic development objectives throughout the world. Corporate social responsibility is the commitment of business to contribute to sustainable economic development working with employees, their families, the local community and society at large to improve their quality of life in ways that are both for business and as well good for the international development. CSR is the responsibility of corporations to go above and beyond what the law requires them to do and as well contribute to a better society and a cleaner environment. Corporate social responsibility is an essential need for companies in order to flourish as well as contribute to society in a very positive manner. This paper will discuss why CSR is needed in a business and how it can affect society as well as the world in a positive and effective manner.
Corporate social responsibility comes with great benefits as well as challenges and issues facing those involved with implementing CSR. The benefits that come with CSR are increased employee loyalty and retention. There is also an increased quality of products, services, customer loyalty, reputation, brand image, greater productivity, and quality. Corporate social responsibility helps access to capital and market and as well helps for product safety and decreased liability. There is also a business benefit to CSR as it helps with shareholder value, revenue, operational efficiency, innovation, and human capital. These are positive factors to CSR but there can also be challenges that come along with it. One of the challenges is that supplier lack support from buyers and retailers. This means suppliers have to bear all of the CSR implementation costs and sometimes it will be too costly. Due to tight deadlines, management’s time and attention is necessarily focused on achieving timely and efficient production outcomes which results in a neglection of CSR. Over the years CSR has evolved very drastically because before they were not the companies mission statements and had a more negative perspective from the public. In this era, companies have started to include the idea of CSR and use them in their business as a way to flourish. The Nike company had a goal to provide an environment which develops people to maximize their contribution to Nike as well as provide quality and innovative services and products internally and externally. There were both negative and positive outcomes that came along with this goal. Economically there were riots at retail locations form undersupply and over demands and as well as a slowdown in foreign markets. Nike fixed this eventually by continuing to sell out its competition as well as signing major athletes to promote the brand as well as to increase profit. Ethically and legally Nike was using sweatshops and failed to raise wages in foreign countries as well as an excessive use of child labor. This was fixed as well by raising wages in accordance with the country’s laws. They also released all locations of all Nike facilities in foreign countries. Nike has been successful at its CSR activities and values, due to the fact that whenever a negative arises, they are quick to overcome it and replace it with something that not only benefits the company but the environment and world as well.
During the soul of the economy forum, a woman by the name of Dr. Elaine Ubalijoro who is the executive director of clear international development INC was introduced. Her goal was to promote global health through the development of independent sustainable clinical programs and research systems in resource-limited areas in Africa. She believed in the process of innovation because she believed this would bring the sectors together for great prosperity, sustainability, competitiveness, and well-being. Dr. Elaine Ubalijoro stated that in order for innovation to have an impact what is needed is visioning a new. In why business matters to God, it states that business enables to express aspects of their God-given identities by participating in meaningful and creative work as well as rendering service that will enable humanity to flourish. This supports the idea of innovation because it is critical to everything we do, it is not about management, we have to innovate to create everything, and so creativity matters when you are innovating. This is showing creativity in a person’s work as well as the ideas that come with it that help flourish society in a positive manner. She also stated innovation is about surviving and thriving and visioning a world that is necessary to vision because it’s either that or chaos. Dr. Elaine Ubalijoro believes leadership is important to innovation because leadership is a set of processes that create organizations in the first place and adapts them to significantly changing circumstances. Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the challenges. Dr. Elaine Ubalijoro shares a story about how she went back to Rwanda in the last 10 years and realized everything had to be done. Everything had to be created, so there were no systems to manage. Everything had to be a vision, and this was very important when talking about innovation. Leadership is so important to innovation because it builds one’s capacity to vision, act, and inspire. Whether it’s good leadership or bad leadership, there is a vision and there is the capacity to capture one of those kinds of leaders, you just have to act and inspire a lot of people. Dr. Elaine Ubalijoro moved away from her scientific background and started to study everything from spirituality and cultural society. She found out something called cultural means and it was defined as how a culture evolves through certain specific patterns and how we can go up in terms of evolutionary cultural true or we can go down those terms. She had an idea to work on food security in Rwanda because she believed it was the edge of innovation and that’s what was needed. With the knowledge she had, she started talking and connecting to people and started dreaming with people and through this, she believed innovation is also about how we build community and capacity and how do we allow others to learn and grow and thrive as well. She believed there are three sectors for balance which were public sector, the private sector, and plural sector. The plural sector is about citizens and communities and engagement. The importance of the plural sector is stabilizing so its citizen’s engagement, citizen power, and community power help give more chances of community development that sustains all of us. Dr. Elaine Ubalijoro believes you have to put yourself in a place of discomfort into being not fearful of failure. When we fail it is okay because we innovate and when don’t take risks we do not innovate. Innovation is important as it shows how God has put us in the businesses world to help society in a positive manner that will not only contribute to our own well-being but also to Gods work as well.
In conclusion, the factors of why business matters to God and the factors of corporate social responsibility related to one another because they both have the idea of engaging in a business with a sole purpose. They both primarily focus on the aspects of innovating as well as creativeness when it comes to starting a business. Focusing on customer satisfaction and treating employees with respect also contribute to both these factors. As a business engages in the thought of creativeness it helps open up room to grow for the business to flourish as well as let individuals express the values that were given to them by God. Being innovative is another important aspect to why it matters to God as well as CSR because it shows creativity in a person’s work as well as the ideas that come with it that help flourish society in a positive manner. This can help strive businesses towards a goal for people who have similar thoughts and ideas because they are all working towards the same concept to help society as well as to help in God’s work. The soul of the economy is shaped by CSR as well as why business matters to god by helping people find ways on how to become sustainable, helping people to flourish with their God-given creativity, and most importantly be innovate when it comes to the goal they are trying to pursue. In my opinion, shaping the soul of the next economy means that people in the next era will see how we have shaped society and will learn and grow from the information we provided for them. They will be able to realize how business engages in an individual’s creativity and how being sustainable helps to flourish. If we are not sustainable, I believe we will not have a positive business to look towards and that there will be no basic knowledge on how a business should work.