Corporate Social Responsibility

The task of corporate social responsibility is to prevent morally reprehensible practices, which can weaken society, damage companies and hurt employees. More and more companies have realized the relevance of moral practices in the business, even though they have not always sufficiently implemented CSR, yet. Concrete preventative measures are often labeled ‘risk management,’ a term more commonly used for avoiding financial risk and damage to a company’s reputation. Thus, companies define clear rules, so-called ‘compliance’ or ‘value-management’ systems. However, those are only one aspect of corporate social responsibility: CSR is not just about preventing ‘bad practices,’ like corruption and fraud and so on. 

There is no doubt that compliance management could be an efficient control mechanism in organizations, but companies can contribute to a good society through good business practices. CSR is about how companies make profits, not about how they spend them and it demands systemic changes in a market economy. Companies most not only become economic, but also moral actors. It requires an important and strong integrative perspective: Social and ecological criteria must be taken into consideration. We need employees of integrity at all levels of the company, and we also need organizational structures and clear rules. CSR is concerned with both individuals and institutional structure and ethics through questions of justification and implementation.