The Corporate Social Responsibility - Essay Example

Corporate Social Responsibility - Public Relations Field of Study Introduction Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) with reference to the public relations is a very important field. Every organization applies it but in different ways depending on the organizations that is involved. It is also the corporate responsibility, corporate citizenship, sustainability, stewardship, responsible business and accountability (Hunt & Grunig, 1994). It is actually the manner in which a particular organization integrates its economic, social and environmental concerns into its decision making, culture, values, operations and strategies in the establishments as well as improvement of the organization’s practices. It is the way in which the organization achieves accountability and transparency as well as economic sustainability (Mann, 2009). The following are some of the issues which are captured in the Corporate Social Responsibility; health and safety, environmental sustainability, human rights, corporate ethics and governance, performance reports, accountability, transparency, human resource management, development, community involvement, investment, anticorruption measures, customer satisfaction and adherence to all the principles of acceptable competition. Application of Corporate Social Responsibility in Australia- case study of Sony group of company The application of corporate social responsibility in Australia is in relation with some of the models of public relations. These models are publicity or press release, which manipulates the public to be able to behave the way the organization intends; public information model which deals with the use of the press release to pass information about the organization to the public (Hunt & Grunig, 1994). Another model is one way-asymmetrical model that deals with the use of persuasion and manipulation to pass information that will make the public to behave the way the organization intends the public to. Finally, the two ways symmetry model, which the organization uses information to have a negotiation with the public at large so that it can behave the way the organization, wants (Hunt & Grunig, 1994). Sony is one of the organizations in Australia that is well recognized for its role in ensuring environmental, social and economic sustainability in all of its operations. It deals with sales of electronic products cameras, computers, video, music, cameras gems machines and also telecommunication gargets (Bonner, 2009). It applies a number of measures to ensure Corporate Social Responsibility has been achieved taking care of the customers and the employees (public relations) ensuring it is reaching its goals and also environmental factors. It should be noted that every labour law in whichever country provides for some ethical regulations and rules that must be adhered by the employer especially as far as handling the workers is concerned. There are very important considerations that the Sony Company has taken into action and put in place regarding the labour ethics are concerned in the working environment (Sison, 2009). Good practices must be done to ensure that the workers are comfortable with their working conditions. Employees are entitled to freedom of association, there should be no child labour, employment should not be forced, there should be no disciplinary treatment and the Company must take responsibility for the environmental management (Bonner, 2009). In the sector of problem solving, Sony Company deals with the designing of policies as well as the institutes to ensure there is a better working relationship in the industry. The ethical sector deals with the normative principles concerning the workers as well as their working or employment relations (Carl, 2007). This is whereby it ensures that workers or the employers are not treated as commodities on sale all in the name of human resource because they are human beings, the human relation deals with all that concerns the human beings and heir relationship with each other irrespective of their gender (Tymson et al., 2008). This act to the public is a way of ensuring good public relations. It is the responsibility of the management to ensure the management of all enterprise is well done in the organization whether the human resource or the machines as well as the finances. In the very competitive environment in terms of business and Sony as a business must have a strategic plan so that it can be able to stand in the platform of competition as well as maintain good public relation practice (Bonner, 2009). The following are the five processes that the organization has used in the process of formulating a business strategy; objectives and mission formulation, environmental scanning, formulation of the strategy, implementation of the strategy and finally the control and the evaluation of the strategy. It is the mission that describes the vision of the Sony Company, values, goals and the objectives in order for the business to pursue its future opportunities in terms of the market share. The environmental scanning entails external analysis and internal analysis helpful in understanding the weaknesses, strength, threats and opportunities of the business (Wilcox & Cameron, 2009). The formulation of the strategy entails the process of matching all the information gotten from the environmental scanning in terms of weakness and strengths as well as the threats and opportunities. The importance for this is to give the business a platform for competition as well as superiority in the area of profitability. The implementation of the strategy refers to the process of putting into actions all the programs, procedures and budgets. It is the process that fully involves the organizations resources like the human resource as well as the finances. Also at this stage there is the aspect of motivating the staff to ensure they are aggressive in trying to achieve the Sony Company’s objectives and goals. Finally, the control and evaluation stage involves the process of monitoring and adjusting the implemented strategies through defining the parameters that needs to be measured, defining the values targeted as far as these parameters are concerned, setting the measurement of the performance, comparing the results measured with al predefined standards and finally making any changes that are necessary in the strategy. All of the above are a regular practice of Sony Company (Bonner, 2009). Most of the practices by the Sony Company are totally in line with the requirement of the ethical principles of the Global business standard codex but still that does not mean that the Company doesn’t have opportunities to improve to be able to meet the standards in a better way. Different businesses are guided by different code of ethic depending on the type of the business but generally there are some ethics which are common to all the business (Johnston & Zawawi, 2009). The determination of what is right and what is wrong is called ethic meaning that what is wrong in one company can not be wrong in another Sony company. This explains why the ethics of the companies are different. In the sector of problem solving, Sony as a company has adopted industrial relations deals with the designing of policies as well as the institutes to ensure there is a better working relationship in the industry. The ethical sector in the company deals with the normative principles concerning the workers as well as their working or employment relations (Wilcox & Cameron, 2009). Some of them are geared towards protecting the Sony Company’s image through a code of conduct, developing and coordinating very strong linkage with country and factory managers, Taking a proactive approach towards becoming socially responsible, Understanding why children work, and allowing opportunities for the growth and advancement, Ensuring transparency and accountability, improving public relations and addressing the issue of wages (Carl, 2007). The Participation in the community is a major strengthen in increased market opportunities. For instance, Social clubs in which the Sony Company has been part of has enabled it to reach out to so many members of the community (Carl, 2007). It is widely known to support as many talents as possible in the community during community contests such as sports and cultural activities aim at cultural awareness among others (Johnston & Zawawi, 2009). It is also known to support sports in that it sponsors many clubs as well as encouraging the youth to participate in local sports like handball, football, marathons, camel and horse races. All this aims at increasing its popularity with the community members and also winning of the customers trust, hence increasing trust. The Sony Company’s Customer relation is another strong point in increasing its production (Carl, 2007). It is the tradition of the company to perform a customer evaluation or market study through an external professional research, to get to know the opinions of the customers, perceptions, attitudes and expectation. This has enabled the company to come up with products which matches the interests and needs of the community (Wilcox & Cameron, 2009). The marketers consider the needs of the customers. This means that there should be a research carried out in the vicinity where the business will be set to be able to establish what the customers need. The need depends on the gap that other marketers have not filled. In other words, the marketers must be in a position to give the consumers what they have not been given. This branch of management that entails accounting as well as organizational sustainability is two very important branches of Sony Company (Bonner, 2009). The accounting department is basically involved in the assessment of the organization’s profitability from one financial period to the other. Significant stakeholder pressure is applied to the company to enhance it profit performance from one financial period to the next. The following are the ways the company has ensured Stakeholder’s management (Carl, 2007): 1. Identify key stakeholders. 2. Understand their varied needs. 3. Work closely to find common solution. 4. Recognizing manual interests that will develop corporate and social policies 5. Support at all levels. 6. Extensive communication to ensure all is well versed There are number of sustainability issues that are driving the debate of sustainability and assess in any given organization. These issues are likely to impinge on the management of the accounting’s capacity especially in delivering performance related-information. The result of the above could be either negative or positive depending on the type of impact (Johnston & Zawawi, 2009). This explains why the most successful businesspersons and women who successfully manage their complexity in terms of sustainability gets occasionally rewarded because they are able to deliver intangible advantages, which lead to the most tangible benefits like the best balance sheet, better brand images as well as best stock valuations. Sustainability involves a variety of issues in the business like supply chain like, Customer care, opportunities for the business betterment, the participation of the internal departments, all the profit making tactics and strategies and pro activities (Hines, 2009). All of these issues enable the organization to seize all the opportunities and avoid all the possible risks. Partnership of the organizations as one way of reaching sustainability has been under debate. This is especially due to the short-term partnership that has many disadvantages to the organization in terms of resource differences and the issue of identity, marketing and fundraising. All of these are due o the differences in the organization’s ability to have the human and material resources. The bigger company is likely to have more resources as compared to the smaller one. The change of institutional programs is another very important topic of debate as far as the issue of organizational sustainability is concerned (Hines, 2009). This is because some of the changes that are made in the organization are to boost the income of a certain program, which may not be permanent. This means that once the project time is over the measure that was put forth or the innovations and new technologies that were put forth then ends up being a waste. The key debate here being the issue of resource wastage. Another very important issue of debate is leadership transition. Changes in the leadership of some department of the organization may sound as the best option towards achieving sustainability. However, many questions arise. The new leadership at times affects the productivity of the workers due to the new relationship of the leader and the workers hence not helping the organization achieve the sustainability goal (Fitch, 2009). The change of the environment is another issue as far as sustainability is concerned. This is especially in terms of the economic changes within a given environment the organization is located. This may interfere with the profits due to change in the cost of production and it may interfere with the workers output. The following four aspects must be considered very carefully as far as the issue of quality is concerned by the Sony Company. Quality control, quality inspection, total quality management and quality assurance (Carl, 2007). All of the four factors are different ways of achieving good quality production in the organization. They can bring a positive or a negative effect in the organization. If they are very well applied, then they enhance production of very good quality products but if not well applied they do affect the sales of the services and products due to very low quality (Sriramesh, 2009). Another very important approach is dealing with the organizations boundaries and responsibilities. This is whereby the role and the objectives of the organization are laid down. This is to ensure that the organization always operates on its line of duty. Another very important issue as far as boundary and responsibility is concerned is the roles of the employees. All the employees must clearly know their roles and responsibilities within the organization so that each and every of their effort is geared towards bringing some yields in the organization. Conclusion There is a very great importance of maintaining organizational sustainability. This is because when an organization achieves sustainability in that area its performance in all areas including accounting also improves. This is because sustainability is likely to have implications for management accounting in terms of its role in the calculation and reporting of organizational performance. It may mean that existing assessment tools are poorly equipped to respond effectively to sustainability-related matters (Grunig, 2009). In addition, improvement of performance assessment in any given organization is very important. There are so many ways of improving the performance assessment especially by focusing more on the issues of sustainability in the organization all of which are geared toward improving the performances of the organization. References Carl, R. 2007. Sony Australia Limited National Packaging Covenant Action Plan 2007, pp. 4-7. Bonner, T. 2009. Sony Alpha DSLR A300/A350 digital field guide / by Tom Bonner . Chichester : John Wiley. Fitch, K. 2009. Making friends in the Wild West: Singaporean public relations practitioners’ perceptions of working in social media. PRism 6(2) pp. 20-40: http://www.prismjournal.org/fileadmin/Praxis/Files/globalPR/FITCH.pdf Grunig, J. E. 2009. Paradigms of global public relations in an age of digitalisation. PRism 6(2): http://www.prismjournal.org/fileadmin/Praxis/Files/globalPR/GRUNIG.pdf Hines, R. 2009. German public relations. PRism 6(2) pp 35-50: http://www.prismjournal.org/fileadmin/Praxis/Files/globalPR/HINES.pdf Hunt, T. & Grunig, J. 1994. ‘Four models of public relations’, Public relations techniques. Texas: Harcourt Brace, Fort Worth, pp. 8–10. Johnston, J., & Zawawi, C., 2009. Public relations: Theory and practice. N.S.W: Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, pp 40-75. Mann, A. 2009. Communicating the right to food sovereignty: The voice of the Campesino in the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform. PRism 6(2): http://www.prismjournal.org/fileadmin/Praxis/Files/globalPR/MANN.pdf Sison, M. D. 2009. Whose cultural values? Exploring public relations’ approaches to understanding audiences. Prism 6(2): http://www.prismjournal.org/fileadmin/Praxis/Files/globalPR/SISON.pdf Sriramesh, K. 2009. Globalisation and public relations: The past, present, and the future. PRism 6(2): http://www.prismjournal.org/fileadmin/Praxis/Files/globalPR/SRIRAMESH.pdf Tymson, C., Lazar, P., & Lazar, R., 2008. 5th edn updated (or 2006 5th edn,) The New Australian and New Zealand Public Relations Manual, Tymson Communications, Manly, Australia, pp 60-169. Wilcox, D., Cameron, G.T., 2009, Public Relations Strategies and Tactics, 9th Ed. Boston: Pearson International Edition, pp 40-70. Read More