Discuss about the Dictionary Of Corporate Social Responsibility CSR.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the initiatives taken by the organisation to take the responsibility and assess the effects of the company on the social and environmental wellbeing. Woolworths is an Australian supermarket and it was founded in the year 1924. Woolworths Supermarket has it headquarter in Belle Vista and it has its supermarket stores in more than 995 places (Woolworthsgroup.com.au 2018). Woolworths is specialised in selling the groceries, DVDs, magazines, health and beauty products, pet and baby and household products. Revenue of Woolworths touched AU$45 billion in the year 2016. In this report, business report will be prepared addressing Woolworth’s status on CSR and governance. The analysis of the report will be based on the company’s response to the stakeholders’ expectations and sheds light on the gaps between realised and espoused performance on CSR.
According to Carroll’s CSR pyramid, business organisations have mainly four responsibilities. At first, economic responsibility of business is to be profitable and economic factor is another way to survive and get the benefit from society in long-term. In addition, legal responsibility of the business is associated with the activities to obey laws and regulations (Carroll 2016). The organisations must follow the competition, employment and health and safety rules of the organisations. The organisations need to follow the laws set by the society. Ethical responsibilities of the organisation are associated to act ethically and morally following to go beyond the narrow requirements of the law. In addition, the organisations must improve the treatment of suppliers and employees as it is the part of the ethical responsibilities. Philanthropic responsibilities are related to giving back the good things to the society; however this is very important. Examples of the philanthropic working of the organisations are the charitable donations and staff time on the project work.
Business organisation does the configuration of ideas and concept of social responsibilities as well as the social responsiveness. In addition, the business organisations can follow the policies through the observable outcomes to relate the organisation’s societal relationship. These factors are associated to minimise surprises and determining effective corporate social policies. Moreover, principles of the CSR factors are relate to the institutional principles such as legitimacy and organisational principles. In addition, the organisational principle is more likely to public responsibility as well as individual responsibility to understand the managerial discretion. As stated by Gerde et al. (2017), process of CSR responsiveness is associated to the stakeholder, environmental and issues management. In addition principles of CSR are economic, legal, ethical and discretionary (Garyson and Hodges 2017). These factors are related to the social contract for the organisations and business can play the role of the moral agent. Social responsiveness is related to the defensive reactive, proactive and accommodative. This process states the capacity to share the responsive to change the societal condition. Moreover, social issues, issues identification and response development. These factors are related to minimise surprises and determining effective corporate social policies.
Stakeholders of the organisation can affect the actions, policies and objectives of the organisation. A vital component of Woolworths is to understand how to impact and influence the stakeholders of the organisation (Ioannou and Serafeim 2015). The customers are the internal stakeholders of the organisation from 1400 stores and the organisation makes every effort to satisfy the customers. The employees are also internal stakeholders and Woolworths employs 44,000 employees. Suppliers are the external stakeholders as Woolworths have more than thousand direct and indirect suppliers. Communities are also external stakeholders of the organisation as Woolworths has its stores in African regions, Australia and New Zealand where they take initiatives to improve the conditions of communities. The shareholders are the stakeholders of the organisation as it is JSE-listed Company. Woolworths has stakeholders with debt-funders as major source of capital they ensure from the Group.
Woolworths recognises the trust and they value the customers as well as environment. In order to protect the environment, Woolworths has started to inspire healthy choices of food and drinks so that the balance of the environment must not be broken. Some of the stores of Woolworths take some measure to save the Electricity Internally. Woolworths aims to lighten the environmental load by decreasing the electricity used by the power servers. The infrastructure of Woolworths moved and infrastructure serves to create the campaign like ‘ditch disposable’ where the organisation tries to reduce the waste.
Woolworths has taken the initiative to recycle the waste to produce electricity and this green power programme will help to ensure the electricity must come from the renewable sources. In addition, Woolworths’ supermarkets need a huge quantity of electricity on a daily basis and they use the renewable energy. Woolworths uses the sustainable transportation where economic fuel and alternative fuels are used in order to drive the cars. Woolworths has taken the initiative to make a small garden outside the stores.
The progress of the environmental actions is monitored by the management executives and each year Woolworths publish the CR Reports (Woolworthsgroup.com.au 2018). Woolworths has taken the initiative to support the community where they use the resources and skills to support the health and well being of the community people. This information and progress in supporting the environment and society are monitored by the internal management group. London Benchmark Group ensures the social accounting approach that may publicly report the social influence to understand the positive change.
With the presence across the society, cities, remote areas and regions, Woolworths are part of the fabric society (Rupp et al. 2015). Woolworths try to create the employment opportunity in Australia and New Zealand and support the communities when it faces the emergency and natural disasters. Some of the initiatives are Free Fruit for Kids, White Ribbon, Earn and Learn and STAND and some of the programmes are associated with the food rescue partners like Foodbank and OzHarvest. Woolworths provide help directly to the charitable organisations and Woolworths. Woolworths will manage the community investment under the social accounting framework. Woolworths contributes at least 1% of the pre-tax profit every year to the communities in which it operates (Devin and Richards 2016). In addition, Woolworths is concerned about the wellness and it seeks the nourishment drink and food. Woolworths helps the annual general meeting and they discuss the human rights activities. This detail activity of activist can use the small share holdings through the platform.
Woolworths mainly focuses on the stakeholders and it can focus major problems faced by stakeholders in the environment as well as economic area. Moreover, the ethical sourcing policy key stakeholders which includes giving quality services and quality products to the customers. The management of Woolworths is ethical as they always focus to develop the social and environmental practices with them. Corporate Governance Framework and practices of Woolworths Group are set out many numbers of key documents and policies.
Woolworths Group follows each of the recommendations of the ASX Corporate Governance Council’s principles. The Board of Director represents and serves the shareholders’ interests and values. The Board of Director is accountable to shareholders for the direction of strategic framework in order to increase the approved strategy. Board’s responsibilities include the financial oversight, risk management, strategy, social responsibility, regulators, material transaction and leadership selection. The Board approves the goals and duties of the CEO and the directors elect the Chairman of the Board. The Chairman must be independent and non-executive. The Board is established of the large numbers of independent non-executive directors who can help the CEO.
Corporate governance ethics is the ethical issues that arise in the business environment (Kraakman and Hansmann 2017). The main objective of Woolworths includes business and individual as a whole. The shareholders’ activism is the way in which the shareholders’ assets and powers can influence the business operations. Shareholders’ activism includes the private discussion, not voting, public communication with the corporate brand that does the press campaign and blogging. Woolworths provides strategic direction to the corporate strategies and it monitors the management performance. Corporate governance ensures the business is conducted ethically and transparently.
The company embraces responsibility for the activities that must positively affect the environment, consumers, society, employees and other stakeholders. Corporate philanthropy is involved with donating the funds, services and goods to cause. Corporate philanthropy uses the direct organisational resources in order to support the worthy causes for the society (Tai and Chuang 2014). Woolworths in Australia is the most trusted brand in retail and it serves the millions of customers’ every day with great choice, excellent quality and low prices. As a member of the community, Woolworths understands it has its duty to be more than just a retail outlet and reporting Social Impacts shows that the community partners can improve the transforming lives that include the customers and team members. Through EduPlant; the flagship programme of Woolworths Trust helps to donate the food to the needy people in the communities via structured charity organisation.
Reference List
Capaldi, N., Schmidpeter, R., Zu, L. and Fifka, M.S., 2015. Dictionary of corporate social responsibility CSR, sustainability, ethics and governance. Berlin: Springer.
Carroll, A.B., 2016. Carroll’s pyramid of CSR: taking another look. International journal of corporate social responsibility, 1(1), p.3.
Devin, B. and Richards, C., 2016. Food waste, power, and corporate social responsibility in the Australian food supply chain. Journal of Business Ethics, pp.1-12.
Gerde, V.W., Cochran, P.L. and Welcomer, S., 2017. Power and Social Behaviour: A structuration approach to stakeholder networks. In Unfolding Stakeholder Thinking 2 (pp. 83-105). Routledge.
Grayson, D. and Hodges, A., 2017. Corporate social opportunity!: Seven steps to make corporate social responsibility work for your business. Abingdon: Routledge.
Ioannou, I. and Serafeim, G., 2015. The impact of corporate social responsibility on investment recommendations: Analysts’ perceptions and shifting institutional logics. Strategic Management Journal, 36(7), pp.1053-1081.
Kraakman, R. and Hansmann, H., 2017. The end of history for corporate law. In Corporate Governance (pp. 49-78). Gower.
Rupp, D.E., Wright, P.M., Aryee, S. and Luo, Y., 2015. Organizational justice, behavioural ethics, and corporate social responsibility: Finally the three shall merge. Management and Organization Review, 11(1), pp.15-24.
Schwartz, M.S., 2017. Corporate social responsibility. Abingdon: Routledge.
Tai, F.M. and Chuang, S.H., 2014. Corporate social responsibility. Ibusiness, 6(03), p.117.
Woolworths. 2018. Corporate Social Responsibility. [Online] Available at https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/page/community-and-responsibility/group-responsibility/environment/supporting-our-community [Accessed 14th Jun 2018].
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download