Literature review on CSR

   Professor Adela Rogojinaru from University Bucharest, Romania, provided a useful literature review of corporate social responsibility (CSR) at Erasmus Intensive Programme in Belgium in March. The growth of the concept of corporate responsibility is closely related to the topic for my dissertation which will discuss how companies in Japan reacted to the Great Earthquake last March and communicated with the people after the national trauma.

   In 1960’s CSR was considered a sort of burden or supplement for companies. Nobel Prize scholar Milton Friedman states in his book Capitalism and Freedom (1962) that CSR is “against the welfare policy, toxic for the business environment”, although “it may well be in the long-run interest of a corporation because it may reduce the wage bill or lessen losses from pilferage and sabotage”.

   Ed Freeman challenged the idea of Friedman. In 1984 Freeman introduced the concept of a stakeholder approach and identified “group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives”. He argues that if the company wants to keep the business, they “should be managed as if it can continue to serve the interests of stakeholders through time” (Freeman, 1994).

Fujitsu employees building garden shed (cited from Fujitsu)

   European Commission published a report on EUstrategy on CSR in 2011. According to the report EU regards CSR as “the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society”. “The company should have in place a process to integrate social environmental, ethical, human rights and consumer concerns into their business operations and core strategy in close collaboration with their stakeholders”. Now CSR covers a wide range of topics such as human rights, labour, environment, combating corruption and community involvement.

   EC also says that CSR can work as risk management, cutting costs and customer relations because the company can anticipate and meet fast changing expectations of the people and social conditions. However there are only 15 out of 27 EU member states which have national policy frameworks to promote CSR.

   At the end of the lecture Professor Rogojinaru picked up the activity of Fujitsu, an electric and ICT company from Japan. Fujitsu focuses on providing opportunities and security through ICT and reducing carbon emission. The company is ranked 13^th in Newsweek Green Rankings2011, the best among Japanese companies. After the Great Earthquake, the company set up the infrastructure and provided the means of access to the information as a part of their CSR activities.

   Like Fujitsu, a lot of Japanese companies voluntarily joined the rescue work. Is it because of the development of CSR, or is the concept of CSR already embedded in Japanese culture? To answer these questions, I will have to discuss the cultural aspect of CSR as well.