Individual Assignment 5: Reflect on a Guest Lecture

My favorite guest lecture for this class was Dr. Thomas Macagno. Here is his LinkedIn profile.

Dr. Macagno’s lecture focused on corporate social responsibility. This is a topic that is very important to me as a consumer and as a sustainability student. I want to see that companies care about their effect on the environment (or at least will follow standards that their consumers and the government demand of them). I also want to see companies care about defending human rights and safety.

Corporate Social Responsibility is discussed in our textbook in Chapter 2; CSR refers to “the approach that an organization takes in balancing its responsibilities toward different stakeholders when making legal, economic, ethical, and social decisions” (Collins). Mostly they do the “right” thing for their stakeholders. But they also do it for consumers, not always because they care, but because they will lose reputation and profits if they don’t. If consumers spread the fact that they do not care about the environment or human rights, the company will have a harder time finding employees, customers, and stakeholders.

The lecture relates to an article I read from The Harvard Business Review, titled “The Truth About CSR.” The article covers how Corporate Social Responsibility can just be a label used to gain the trust of customers and enhance the company’s reputation. In order for CSR to work it must be profitable to the company, which it has been only due to consumer choice and demand. If companies want to partake in CSR, then they must have a clear and coherent CSR strategy, otherwise it just ends up being talk. When companies genuinely care, it makes CSR work much better in the long run.

References:

Collins, K. (2014). Exploring Business v2.1. Flatworld.

Rangan, K. V., Chase L., and Karim S. (2015). The truth about csr. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 25 April 2018 from hbr.org/2015/01/the-truth-about-csr.