Is Responsibility on the Menu? Managers Must Understand What Corporate Social Responsibility Programs Mean for All Aspects of the Business, and Any CSR Initiative Must Be Led from the Top

Alfonso, Felipe B., Sharma, Prakhar, Communication World

Globalization, the explosion of information technology, advances in the biological sciences, and the growth of democracy and diversity can be considered among the positive developments in our world today. On the other hand, poverty, environmental crises such as global warming, epidemics such as AIDS, and terrorism are also part of today's world. What do these positive and negative aspects have in common? They reflect the breathtaking increase in global interdependence, to the extent that borders don't count for much anymore and local communities are increasingly affected by things that happen a long way from home.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been proposed as a way to respond to some of these issues, both locally and globally. According to "Integrating Responsibility," part of a European Business Forum (EBF) report on CSR, (1) most companies that have initiated CSR programs have done so in response to one problem or another; for example, in the oil and mining industries, it was environmental issues. CSR programs have also surfaced in the sourcing departments of companies facing supply chain issues. As CSR has evolved, however, it has become clear that such responsibilities …

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Publication information: Article title: Is Responsibility on the Menu? Managers Must Understand What Corporate Social Responsibility Programs Mean for All Aspects of the Business, and Any CSR Initiative Must Be Led from the Top. Contributors: Alfonso, Felipe B. - Author, Sharma, Prakhar - Author. Magazine title: Communication World. Volume: 22. Issue: 3 Publication date: May-June 2005. Page number: 14+. © 2009 International Association of Business Communicators. COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group.

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