MANAGING SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ACROSS BORDER

The basic approach to social responsibility, they adopt shape how they manage issues of compliance, the informal dimensions of social responsibility and the evaluation of their social responsibility efforts

Approaches to Social responsibility

a) Obstructionist stance
Organizations that take what might called an obstructionist stance to social responsibility usually do as little as possible to address social or environmental problems.

b) Defensive stance   One step removed from the obstructionist stance is the defensive stance, whereby the organization will do everything that is required of it legally but nothing more. This approach is often adopted by companies that are unsympathetic to the concept of social; responsibility.

c) Accommodative stance
 A firm that adopts an accommodative stance meets its legal and ethical requirements but will also go beyond these requirements in selected cases.

d) Proactive stance
The highest degree of social responsibility that a firm can exhibit is the proactive stance. Firms that adopts this approach take to heart the arguments in favor of social responsibility. They view themselves as citizens in a society and proactively seek opportunities to contribute

Managing Compliance

a) Legal Compliance
Legal compliance is the extent to which the organization conforms to regional, national and international laws. The task of managing legal compliance is generally assigned to the appropriate functional manager.

Examples; the organization’s top human resources executive is responsible for ensuring compliance with regulations concerning hiring, pay and workplace safety and health. Legal department; providing general oversight and answering about interpretation of laws and regulation.

b) Ethical compliance
 Ethical compliance is the extent to which the members of the organization follow basic ethical (and legal) standards of behavior.

c) Philanthropic giving
Philanthropic giving is the awarding of funds or gifts to charities or other social program. Examples; Alcoa gave $112,000 to a small town in Brazil to build a sewage treatment plant.

Informal Dimension of Social responsibility

a) Organization Leadership and Culture
Leadership practices and organization culture can go a long way toward defining the social responsibility stance an organization and its members will adopt.

b) Whistle-Blowing
Anyone who has and reports insider knowledge of illegal activities occurring in an organization. Whistle-blowers can be employees, suppliers, contractors, clients or any individual who somehow becomes aware of illegal activities taking place in a business either through witnessing the behavior or being told about it.

 Evaluating Social Responsibility

A corporate social audit is a formal and thorough analysis of the effectiveness of the firm’s social performance. Define all its social goals, analyze the resources it devoted to each goal, determine how well it is achieving the various goals and make recommendations about which areas need additional attention.

DIFFICULTIES OF MANAGING CSR ACROSS BORDERS

A Model developed by two Dutch CSR expert , Rob van Tulder and Alex van der Zwart . Their approach suggest three main actors in the policy formulation process:

• State - which passes and enforce laws

• Market - which through the process of competition and pricing mechanism utilizes input  and allocates outputs to members of the society

• Civil Society - which includes churches, charitable organization , labor unions, NGOs etc.

The interplay among three actors establishes public policy and the norms of social interaction , including , of course, accepted business behaviors. As is the case with culture , however, these social norms vary from country to country . Van Tulder and vander Zwart's model develop stereotypical behaviors in three regions of the world.

• The Ango-Saxon Approach
• The Asian Approach
• The Continental Approach

The Anglo-Saxon Approach

In  van Tulder and van der Zwart's  analysis, Anglo-Saxon countries view the state , the market  and civil society as separate,competitive and antagonistic.

Eg: when the government must contract with private sector to purchase goods or services such as contracting should be done through an open and competitive bidding process. When business and government fail to maintain sufficient separation, Anglo-saxons deem that failure as corruption.



The Asian Approach

The relationship between these three actors is very different in Asia. Many Asian countries like Japan, China  and Indonesia come to mind-rely on close cooperation between the private sector and the government. Indeed, the economic clout of Japan's keiretsu and Korea's chaebol rest on their willingness to the government's bidding and vice-versa. Many Asian leaders view this cooperation as the linchpin of their successful development strategies -the so -called "Asian Way" Note two thing :
1)   from the perspective of the Anglo-Saxon approach, this symbiotic relationship between business and government is      viewed as "crony capitalism" a polite term for corruption
2)   Civil society plays a minor role in this process
The Continental European Approach

Australia, Germany, France and the Netherlands.
The three actors have much more cooperative ways of working with one another . Example in Germany , large employer associations bargin with umbrella labor organizations under the watchful supervision of the government. similarly Germany's codetermination policy gives workers a well defined role in the governance of large German business and  in general , the policy process is based upon creating consensus among the three actors

Cooperation , not competition , is the hallmark of this approach.

CHAPTER  5

ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

GROUP NAME : TEAMWORK