Strategy Power And Csr

In today’s global and complex environment, traditional views towards organizational management are not enough for businesses to thrive. It’s only by bringing together different approaches can management styles develop fast enough to keep pace with the ever-changing big picture.

In today’s global and complex environment, traditional views towards organizational management are not enough for businesses to thrive. It’s only by bringing together different approaches can management styles develop fast enough to keep pace with the ever-changing big picture.

CSR can help companies build customer loyalty, recruit and retain employees, and stand out in a crowded marketplace. But to be most effective CSR must be intimately connected to the corporate brand—it must reinforce a company’s unique identity, be an integral part of how a company tells its story. How can your company make the most of this potential competitive advantage? In Just Good Business, Kellie McElhaney shows leaders and managers exactly how to connect their CSR efforts to their company’s overall corporate strategy, business objectives, and core competencies. She provides a process for assessing whether CSR practices are reinforcing the brand, explains how to develop a unified CSR strategy, and lays out a framework of seven principles for leveraging the power of CSR branding. McElhaney’s book draws on over ten years of previously unpublished CSR consulting engagements inside companies grappling with developing strategically aligned CSR initiatives. The book’s case vignettes, examples, best practices, and strategic recommendations span a host of industries and sectors, and draw upon McElhaney’s work with leading corporations like McDonalds, Nokia, Medtronic, Levi, Wells Fargo, Birkenstock, Gap, Inc., HP, and Pepperidge Farm. Savvy companies carefully manage their brand in every area—CSR shouldn’t be any different. Just Good Business offers a detailed blueprint any company can use to ensure that their CSR initiatives deliver significant, quantifiable, bottom-line benefit.

The goal of this project is to detail the core, defining principles of strategic CSR that differentiate it as a concept from the rest of the CSR/sustainability/business ethics field. It is designed to be a provocative piece, but one that solidifies the intellectual framework around an emerging concept--strategic CSR.The foundation for these principles comes from my perspective as a management professor within the business school. As such, it is a pragmatic philosophy, oriented around stakeholder theory, that is designed to persuade business leaders who are skeptical of existing definitions and organizing principles of CSR, sustainability, or business ethics. It is also designed to stimulate thought within the community of intellectuals and business school administrators committed to these issues, but who approach them from more traditional perspectives. Ultimately, therefore, the purpose of the strategic CSR concept (and this book) is radical--it aims to redefine both business education and business practice. By building a theory that defines CSR as core to business operations and value creation (as opposed to peripheral practices that can be marginalized within the firm), these defining principles become applicable across the range of operational functions. As such, they redefine how businesses approach these functions in practice, but also redefine how these subjects should be taught in business schools.

For decades, multinational corporations benefited from developing countries mainly as a source of cheap labour and weak regulations. Even when corporate social responsibility (CSR) was embraced it has been tailored to customers in the developed world. With the rise of the middle class in emerging economies and social media driven scrutiny of corporate conduct around the globe, CSR increasingly requires an international outlook. Adopting strategic CSR in international business provides multinational corporations with a competitive edge. An emerging field of research around international CSR points to global, local and transnational strategies as viable options. Considering impacting variables such as cultural distance, industry features and brand visibility, recommendations are derived for managers that advance the concept of shared value for business and society. In addition, a set of future research questions is outlined to further the academic discussion around this important aspect of business in the 21th century.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is simply the maximization of a companyÂs value over time, undertaken because, in the long run, social and environmental problems ultimately become financial problems. The justification for CSR is therefore associated with representing the nature and role of the company, as well as its purpose. Companies therefore regard CSR as a strategic investment that is part of a proactive, resilient, inclusive approach, based on the creation of shared value. This approach is capable of reducing negative societal impacts of their activities, or inducing positive impacts if they sustain a hybrid culture, all the while improving their competitive advantage. This book presents a theoretical development that analyzes the challenges of CSR strategies based on the creation of shared value. Two case studies are presented, analyzing the different forms of social innovation strategies capable of inducing this shared value creation.

Blending theory with practical application, this comprehensive text supports courses at the intersection of corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate strategy, and public policy. Part I provides an overview of the field, defining CSR and placing it in the context of wider corporate strategy. Part II contains chapters on CSR issues related to the organization, the economy, and society, and provides detailed case studies on a variety of well-known firms. Adopting a stakeholder perspective, the authors explore CSR issues within the complex global business environment in which corporations operate today.

In today's global business environment it is no longer acceptable that a corporation does well simply by doing good. It is expected. With increasing pressures from stakeholders to improve the bottom line as well as to be good corporate citizens, business leaders face tough decisions. What social issues should we support? What initiatives should we develop that will do the most good for the company as well as the cause? Do we include social messages in our advertising, encourage our employees to volunteer, do we modify our business practices? How do we integrate a new initiative into current strategies? These and other challenges will continue to face future leaders. This book provides thoughtful answers to these important questions, and to many more. The book offers suggestions on how to choose among major worthy causes and also how to measure the amount of good achieved both for the recipients and the companies themselves. Of course, all is not only about challenges, there are loads of opportunities that go along with them but it’s only responsible and sustainable leaders who would be able to spot these opportunities. That is the future which awaits 21st century leaders.