Corporate Responsibility and Social Responsibility

In order to discuss the differences between corporate responsibility and social responsibility, we first must define how we view each of these concepts. After doing some research on the subject, I found out that social responsibility can be viewed in different ways.

Corporate responsibility is considered to be primarily economic and legal responsibility. We can define economic responsibility as a corporation's duty to produce goods and services and in the process to provide jobs with good wages while still earning a profit for its stakeholders. A corporation's legal responsibility is to follow the law that legislatures and other division's of the government use to protect employees', stakeholders, customers, suppliers and other regulatory laws that could include protecting the community.

We can define social responsibility as anything that goes beyond economic and legal responsibility. We can say that corporations accept social responsibilities in order to meet society's expectations. An example of social responsibility could be a company sponsoring a section to road that it's employees cleans up regularly.

After reviewing what both corporate responsibility and social responsibility is, we now can determine two differences between them. Laws that govern our nation do not only require corporate responsibility, but an economic responsibility for the community it is located in. We also can say that a corporation doesn't have to have any social responsibility, however to be accepted by society it is expected that companies that do well to give back to the community. Some examples of social responsibility could include programs like box tops for education, above and beyond benefit packages for its employee's, or sponsoring a little league team. There are also arguments against social responsibility by which stakeholders feel that spending the profits on social responsibility's goes against the grain for their corporate responsibility which is to make profits for their stakeholders.

References:

Business Ethics, The Magazine of Corporate Responsibility, summer 2006, VOL. 20 #2, retrieved from http://www.business-ethics.com/whats_new/Vol_20_No_2_Charles_Elson_Interview.html

Boatright, John R, 2007, "Ethics and the Conduct of Business, Fifth Edition" Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 07458

CTU Online Course Materials, PHL210-0603-B-04, Retrieved on September 5, 2006, from https://campus.ctuonline.edu/MainFrame.aspx?ContentFrame=/Default.aspx