Corporate social responsibility (CSR) requires that organisations give back to the society by way of investing part of their profits in socio-economic activities of their host communities. Companies adopt different strategies to realising their CSR obligations to the host communities.
Required:
Identify and explain FOUR strategies for managing Corporate Social Responsibility in organizations. (8 marks)
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- Proactive strategy– strategy which a business follows where it is prepared to take full responsibility for its actions. A company which discovers a fault in a product and recalls the product without being forced to, before any injury or damage is caused, acts in a proactive way.
- Reactive strategy – This involves allowing a situation to continue unresolved until the public, government or consumer groups find out about it. The reactive strategy refuses all kind of CSR and then does not implement what the stakeholders expect.
- Defence strategy – This involves minimising or attempting to avoid additional obligations arising from a particular problem. The defensive strategy accepts the idea of some CSR but defines and implements only the minimum of what stakeholders expect.
- Accommodation strategy – This approach involves taking responsibility for actions, probably when one of the following happens: Encouragement from special interest groups; Perception that a failure to act will result in government intervention. The accommodating strategy integrates CSR and tries to implement what the stakeholders expect. The proactive strategy anticipates the requirements and expectations of the stakeholders, it defines objectives and implements actions going beyond what stakeholders require (this is the case of the linked and integrated CSR).