DF 11 Charley Keuscher

Read the entire Chapter 2.  Focus your attention on social responsibility.  Based on your readings in Chapter 2, describe the reasons that the organization leaders, managers and HRM must make social responsibility a top priority.  Assess different programs and initiatives that can be taken by one or all of the mentioned organizational leaders. You can use your own current or previous experiences as a way of supporting your discussion points.  Discuss whether all stakeholders need to be involved in this important organizational commitment. Your response needs to be around 200 to 300 words.

An organization needs to be socially responsible. Corporate social responsibility looks at how the day to day operations of an organization interfere with and affect the larger society and the world. As such, corporate social responsibility can generally be defined as contributing to sustainable development by working to improve the quality of life with employees, their families, the local community and the stakeholders up and down the supply chain.

There are many reasons as to why the organization leaders, managers and HRM must make social responsibility a top priority. First, it gives a better accessibility to certain markets. This may be common among firms that sell products to the general public. Second, it can lead to differentiating products (Mello, 2015). It is easy to differentiate these firms’ products especially if they give credible information about the environmental feature of their products. Also, the consumers may just be willing to pay and the firm should be in a position to offer a wide range of possibilities. These two advantages help in increasing revenues of the firm.

On the other hand, social responsibility can also help the firm reduce its costs in a number of ways. Some of these ways include risk management in relation to external stakeholders, costs of materials, energy and services are reduced in that these firms belong to industries where market-based environmental pollution are implemented, cost of labor is minimized especially if the firm is located in areas where sensitivity to environmental concerns is important, and cost of capital is reduces specifically for firms with shares exchanged on stock markets.

There are different programs and initiatives that can be undertaken by one or all organizational leaders as efforts towards social responsibility with involvement of all the stakeholders. They include communicating and training workers together with shaping the culture of the organization around issues of social responsibility. 

Reference 

Mello, J. (2015). Strategic Human Resources Management (4th ed.). Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning.