Doing Business in the Global Environment: Corporate Social Responsibility as an Organization's Core Business Strategy?

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Business Ethics, Corporate Ethics, grade: 1,7, University of Cooperative Education (International Business Administration), course: -, 30 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In recent years, a great concern about the broad impacts of business on society has evolved. As a result, this concern has transformed into the responsibility business has to society. Accordingly, companies see their actions more and more monitored by the public, on both national and international level. Thus, their role within society is gaining importance, being considered a creative and institutional one, instead of only existential. Apart from that, this results in a growing interaction between the government, business and the stakeholder. In the past, business' primary concern was the economic situation, whereas today, business has to consider the legal, ethical, moral and social impact of its decisions as well. This leads to the assumption that in the near future, it will not be possible to conduct business without acting socially responsible. This development is closely connected to the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, which is the subject of this paper. Concerning the selection of secondary literature, apart from both English and German books, several articles from business magazines have been included in the research. At first, this paper will provide an overview of the current emergence of CSR as an essential part of daily business. However, the focus lies on the effects of CSR on an organization's core business. In Germany, for instance, while acknowledging their social responsibility, companies are still far away from making CSR part of their core business strategy. This paper will discuss the possibility of how embedding CSR in a firm's strategy can lead to business success. In addition, a potential link between competitive advantage and CSR will be outlined, before some major arguments of critics will be illustrated. Finally, as a conclusion, the main arguments and results of the research will be summarized and a short outlook will be provided.