Social Responsibility

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Figura 1
“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for theharder I work the more I live.1” - George Bernard Shaw -

CONTENTS
Introduction 3
Different concepts 4
Advantages and disadvantages 4
Approaches to social responsibility 5
History of social responsibility 6
Some cases 6
Our thoughts8
References 9

INTRODUCTION
Can an oil company or a fast food business demonstrate social responsibility? Can a charity or a church operate in a socially irresponsible way? Your viewpoint will probably influence your decision but it is more complicated than a simple yes or no2 (J. Bright, 2010).
To this end, social responsibility can be defined in different waysdepending on the various cases. It means accountability to some people, which is being accountable for one's actions towards themselves and to others. Yet to others it implies dependability and having control of one's actions3 (A. Naswa, 2009).
All the previously given definitions are right, but you should consider the specific context in which they are used. Social responsibility is in general anethical ideology or theory that an individual has the duty to act in behalf of the society. Social responsibility is a task everybody has to achieve to guarantee a balance between the economy and the environmental surroundings. There is always a relationship between economic growth, in the material sense, and the well-being of the society and ecosystem. Social responsibility means keeping up thestability between them. It refers not only to business factories and organizations but also to everybody who acts within the environment. Consequently being socially responsible means that people and organizations must behave ethically and with sensitivity toward social, cultural, economic and environmental issues4.
All the definitions above refers to general concepts, but if you talk aboutbusinesses and organizations, the first significant contemporary definition was given by Howard R. Bowen's book Social Responsibility of the Businessman in 1953. He defined the term “social responsibilities of businessmen” as:
It [social responsibility] refers to the obligation of businessmen to pursue those policies, to make those decisions, or to follow those lines of action which are desirable interms of objectives and values of our society5.
Secondly, Archie Carroll (1979) said that:
the social responsibility of business encompasses the economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has of organizations at a given point in time6.
Figura 2 (Jones, 2010, p. 223)
Finally, Gareth Stedman Jones (2009, p. 222) gives a contemporary and complete definition of it; hestates that the term social responsibility refers to a manager’s duty or obligation to make decisions that nurture, protect, enhance, and promote the welfare and well-being of stakeholders and society as a whole7.
So, many theorists have attempted to delineate this concept but in general they have failed. Although it is complicated to define it, most of them tries to find different kinds ofactivities, to present them to businessmen, and then to check the results and the reactions. Besides, the idea of social responsibility is continually evolving and it can mean different things to different people depending on the various context.
DIFFERENT CONCEPTS
Society’s demands for individual and corporate social responsibility as alternative responses to market and distributive failures are...