To What Extent Do You Agree That the Main Beneficiaries of Csr Will Always Be a Firm’s Stakeholders Rather Than Its Shareholders?
To what extent do you agree that the main beneficiaries of CSR will always be a firm’s stakeholders rather than its shareholders?
Corporate social responsibility has a number of affects for both the stakeholders and shareholders in a business. The effects on both of these will be dependent upon the type of business and the social responsibility programme which they adopt. But who benefits the most? And over time will this always be the same?
All firms need to fulfil the needs of their customers to enable them to remain competitive and function as a profitable business, the employees of a business also need to be happy in the workplace to enable them to be productive and reduce labour turnover. A lot of businesses have a large impact on many things such as the environment and the local community and therefore to keep customers and employees happy they need to take responsibility for their actions. Therefore corporate social responsibility programmes are designed with stakeholders in mind. For example, Marks & Spencers had aimed to invest £200m over five years with the aim to achieve 100 actions and targets within this time with the objective of making M&S’s entire business carbon neutral. Having the entire business being carbon neutral customers will feel like their money is being spent in responsible places and that they are contributing to large investments such as the £200m recently spent on CSR. Employees will also be very satisfied by this change as they will be working in a responsible company and I believe that this would lead to a friendly working environment where labour productivity is increased by a large proportion.
But who pays for the large investments? Shareholders will have to invest heavily into this and take cuts from their dividends, this could be seen as a huge disadvantage to them as they have high costs and a very little, if any return in the short term. A lot of investors are only interested in a quick return from their profits and
Corporate social responsibility has a number of affects for both the stakeholders and shareholders in a business. The effects on both of these will be dependent upon the type of business and the social responsibility programme which they adopt. But who benefits the most? And over time will this always be the same?
All firms need to fulfil the needs of their customers to enable them to remain competitive and function as a profitable business, the employees of a business also need to be happy in the workplace to enable them to be productive and reduce labour turnover. A lot of businesses have a large impact on many things such as the environment and the local community and therefore to keep customers and employees happy they need to take responsibility for their actions. Therefore corporate social responsibility programmes are designed with stakeholders in mind. For example, Marks & Spencers had aimed to invest £200m over five years with the aim to achieve 100 actions and targets within this time with the objective of making M&S’s entire business carbon neutral. Having the entire business being carbon neutral customers will feel like their money is being spent in responsible places and that they are contributing to large investments such as the £200m recently spent on CSR. Employees will also be very satisfied by this change as they will be working in a responsible company and I believe that this would lead to a friendly working environment where labour productivity is increased by a large proportion.
But who pays for the large investments? Shareholders will have to invest heavily into this and take cuts from their dividends, this could be seen as a huge disadvantage to them as they have high costs and a very little, if any return in the short term. A lot of investors are only interested in a quick return from their profits and