Social Responsibility In Business

863 Words4 Pages
Social responsibility, as a concept, has become a tremendously important challenge for the business sector in recent years, due to the fast-changing environment, business climate and social challenges that every company faces. In the long-run, it is believed that the companies that will actually survive in such environment will be those that show a high level or social responsibility, or simply, the firms that will gain general “empathy” to the society as a whole. When analyzing social responsibility and its responsiveness, one must have basic knowledge of the structure of the business sectors first. According to the Federation of Chambers of Commerce, SMEs constitute the largest part of the global economy where 80% of the total workforce…show more content…
The main issue in the actual definition of social responsibility lies in the fact that not everyone can fully agree whether one action is socially responsible or not. Even today, it would be incredibly hard to state a definition that can be certainly accepted in the academic world. This issue might even go as far as saying: “We have looked for a definition and basically there isn’t one” (Jackson and Hawker, 2001). This extent is not quite the issue, but the problem lies in the variety of many definitions which are very much biased accordingly to specific individual interests which prevent the development and implementation of the concept (Van Marrewijk,…show more content…
If we narrow this definition to a local level, it would include relationships between the corporation and the local citizens in the society. On the other hand, there may be another definition that examines the relationship between the corporation and its stakeholders. In the same proportion with these broad definitions, there is the ethical issue asking whether corporations should be increasingly regulated. Crowther and Caliyurt (2004b) developed the concept of social contract which represents the altruistic behavior between the corporations and society. In its essence, the main focus is on the self interest directly related to selfishness. They argue that their concept of social contract was based on the utilitarian perspective by people as Bentham, Locke and Mill whose main ideas were to pursuit “the greatest happiness for the greatest number”. Another influential factor would be Adam Smith and the development of the concept of free-market economics, which according to Crowther, is predicted on competing
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