BUSINESS LAW Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

BUSINESS LAW - Essay Example In these reports, they show their financial, social and environmental investment to mitigate the losses and harms caused by their corporate activities. These few pages provides a way to these companies to marketize their public image, avoid regulation, access to markets and gaining legitimacy for their corporate objectives. In this paper, corporate social responsibility is defined with emphasis on innovation, and subsequently companies publishing CSR are critically analyzed and discussed in a way to reach at a reasonable conclusion. Corporate Social Responsibility Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept whereby companies integrate environmental and social concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis (European Commission). Additionally, CSR has various definitions (Margolis and Walsh, 2003). Also, Wood (1991) provides that CSR is also called as corporate social performance, sustainable responsible business (SRB) , corporate responsibility, corporate citizenship or responsible business. ... The definition of CSR describes a wide range of stakeholders. Interestingly, each stakeholder does not have the same kind of interests in a company rather different. And these interests vary, as the currency of environmental and social issues revolves over a period of time ((Clarkson, 1995; Davis, 1973; Moskowitz, 1975; Wartick &Cochran, 1985). In the CSR reports, the companies incorporate their current corporate activities that harm environment and society. Besides, such reports contain the positive and negative effects of commercial activities. And, in such reports, the companies mention their current level of financial and non-financial investment in order to minimize the impacts of their commercial activities. As employees, suppliers, creditors, customers, social and environmental groups, governments, local communities can be stakeholders; the companies prepare their CSR reports with regard to the concerns of the related stakeholders. As a result, mostly they are identified as th e stakeholders. However, some companies have been publishing CSR for many years. And, their websites are filled with the material showing their policy to tackle the environmental and social concerns. For example, on the Seventh Generation website, it is mentioned they have been environmentally and socially playing their role and working with innovations to live better life. Environmentally, the company provides its Greenhouse Gas Accounting, carbon footprint reports and their strategies to minimize them. Socially, the website maintains that it has Seventh Generation supports the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (OCRF) (7genreport, web). Additionally, Wal-Mart also publishes its sustainability reporting with